Huzhou had a permanent population of 3.41 million as of the end of 2022, 6,000 more than the previous year, according to a communiqué recently released by the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Statistics.

Of the 3.41 million people, about 2.27 million were urban residents, meaning the ratio of urban-rural residents in the city was 66.4 percent, an increase of 0.4 percentage points from a year earlier.

Last year, Huzhou's birth rate was 0.55 percent while the mortality rate was 0.69 percent, meaning the city's natural growth rate was negative.

Wuxing district, the most populous administrative area in Huzhou, had a permanent population of 727,300. It was followed by Changxing county (679,800), Anji county (596,100), Deqing county (553,800), Nanxun district (546,300), and South Taihu Lake New District (309,800).