A ranking of China's ten largest province-level divisions by land area, covering both provinces and autonomous regions. Each entry also lists its capital and its resident population from the 2020 national census, which exposes how sharply land area and population diverge across the country.
Xinjiang alone spans 1.6649 million sq km, over a third larger than either Tibet or Inner Mongolia and nearly eight times the size of tenth-placed Hunan. The top four — Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Qinghai — cover about 4.77 million sq km, roughly half of China's land area, yet together hold fewer than 60 million residents. Hunan packs 66.44 million people into just 211,800 sq km, a population density more than 100 times Tibet's. No municipality makes the list: Chongqing, the largest, covers only about 82,400 sq km.
| Rank | Province-level division | Area (10,000 sq km) | Capital | Population (10,000, 2020 census) | Geographic note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region | 166.49 | Ürümqi | 2585.23 | China's largest province-level division, covering roughly one-sixth of the country's land area; it borders eight countries including Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan and has the longest land frontier of any Chinese region |
国家统计局, 第七次全国人口普查公报（分省常住人口）, published 2021-05-11, retrieved 2026-08-04.
| 2 |
Tibet Autonomous Region |
120.28 |
| Lhasa |
364.81 |
| Averaging over 4,000 m in elevation and known as the roof of the world; at about three people per sq km it has the lowest population density of any Chinese region |
| 3 | Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region | 118.3 | Hohhot | 2404.92 | Stretching about 2,400 km from east to west, the widest region in China, spanning the northeast, north and northwest at once |
| 4 | Qinghai | 72.23 | Xining | 592.4 | Source of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers and home to Sanjiangyuan National Park, as well as Qinghai Lake, China's largest lake |
| 5 | Sichuan | 48.6 | Chengdu | 8367.49 | The most populous province in western China; its terrain climbs from the Chengdu Plain in the east to plateaus and snow peaks above 4,000 m in the west |
| 6 | Heilongjiang | 47.3 | Harbin | 3185.01 | China's northernmost and easternmost province, holding both extremes at Mohe and Fuyuan, and long the country's top grain producer |
| 7 | Gansu | 42.58 | Lanzhou | 2501.98 | Shaped like a long dumbbell about 1,600 km from end to end, threaded by the Hexi Corridor that formed the backbone of the ancient Silk Road |
| 8 | Yunnan | 39.41 | Kunming | 4720.93 | The most biodiverse province in China, with elevations ranging from 76 m to 6,740 m, bordering Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam |
| 9 | Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region | 23.76 | Nanning | 5012.68 | The only Chinese autonomous region with a coastline, opening onto the Beibu Gulf; karst landforms cover roughly 40 percent of its territory |
| 10 | Hunan | 21.18 | Changsha | 6644.49 | Named for lying south of Dongting Lake; at about 314 people per sq km it is the most densely populated entry on this list |
各省级人民政府门户网站"省情概况"栏目：新疆、西藏、内蒙古、青海、四川、黑龙江、甘肃、云南、广西、湖南, retrieved 2026-08-04.
Wikipedia, List of Chinese administrative divisions by area, retrieved 2026-08-04.
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