This dataset (in ESRI shapefile) contains the geographic boundaries of Chinese urban areas for the years of 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010. The datasets were derived from nighttime remote sensing imagery (1km of spatial resolution) constrained to the development statistics of individual cities.

Please cite the following paper for the use of this dataset:

@article{Liu2016,
  title={These lit areas are undeveloped: Delimiting China’s urban extents from thresholded nighttime light imagery},
  author={Liu, Ying and Delahunty, Tina and Zhao, Naizhuo and Cao, Guofeng},
  journal={International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation},
  volume={50},
  pages={39--50},
  year={2016},
  publisher={Elsevier}
}