There are three resident statuses in Shenzhen: Shenzhen hukou, long term residence permit (常住证), and illegal residents or the floating population (流动人口). In turn, these different statuses are reflected in two kinds of population statistics: the long term population (常住人口) and the administrative population (管理人口).  The long term population is divided into those residents with hukou and those with permits. The administrative population refers to the number of renters who have been registered at a local police station. In practice, the difference between the long term and administrative populations provides insight into how large the floating population is.

Here’s the rub: Cities and districts usually only release population statistics, even though the actual population is on record via individual precincts, which report their statistics to the District. In turn, reporting practices vary widely between districts, making it difficult to ascertain how many people actually live and work in a district, let alone in an urban village. Consider, for example, 2010 census reports from three Shenzhen Districts, Nanshan, Luohu, and Bao’an.

Nanshan District only reported the long-term population and population density:

Luohu District also reported he long-term population and population density:

Finally, Bao’an District reported figures for the long-term and floating populations:

Now, inquiring minds want to know: how do we use the discrepancies between the long-term and floating populations in Bao’an to guestimate the actual populations in Nanshan and Luohu? Bao’an has a long-term population of 4 million and a floating population of 6.2, which is to say that the long-term population is roughly 2/3 of the total population. Do we take Bao’an as a working standard and assume that the roughly 1 million inhabitants in Nanshan are only two-thirds an administrative population of 1.5 million, while Luohu’s 920,000 long-term residents are two-thirds of an estimated population of 1.37 million? If so, this would make Shenzhen’s administrative population over 22 million people, in contrast to the reported .

That said, we know that most of Shenzhen’s floating population lives in Bao’an, Longgang and the four new districts. So perhaps the 2/3 rule would only apply in the outer districts. However, in order to know how thoroughly the floating population and lower income long term inner district residents are being displaced we need access to administrative population statistics.