China's developer cities.
Where are China's developers, and which cities build the most AI?
65% of China's developers on GitHub who name a city are in just four cities (n=167,800).
Sample: 167,800 developers · source: public GitHub profiles · data to 24 September 2026
By city
| City | Figure | Sample (developers) | In words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beijing | 25.9% | 43,531 | Beijing has 25.9% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (43,531; 14.9% of its active developers build AI). |
| Shanghai | 20.8% | 34,847 | Shanghai has 20.8% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (34,847; 15% of its active developers build AI). |
| Shenzhen | 9.6% | 16,094 | Shenzhen has 9.6% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (16,094; 15.3% of its active developers build AI). |
| Hangzhou | 8.7% | 14,572 | Hangzhou has 8.7% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (14,572; 16.3% of its active developers build AI). |
| Guangzhou | 5.5% | 9,229 | Guangzhou has 5.5% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (9,229; 13.9% of its active developers build AI). |
| Chengdu | 4.4% | 7,346 | Chengdu has 4.4% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (7,346; 12.4% of its active developers build AI). |
| Nanjing | 3.8% | 6,439 | Nanjing has 3.8% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (6,439; 12.1% of its active developers build AI). |
| Wuhan | 3.5% | 5,869 | Wuhan has 3.5% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (5,869; 12% of its active developers build AI). |
| Xi'an | 2% | 3,282 | Xi'an has 2% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (3,282; 12% of its active developers build AI). |
| Chongqing | 1.5% | 2,460 | Chongqing has 1.5% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (2,460; 11.4% of its active developers build AI). |
| Suzhou | 1.3% | 2,242 | Suzhou has 1.3% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (2,242; 14.2% of its active developers build AI). |
| Hefei | 1.2% | 1,996 | Hefei has 1.2% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (1,996; 12.8% of its active developers build AI). |
| Tianjin | 1.2% | 2,006 | Tianjin has 1.2% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (2,006; 12.6% of its active developers build AI). |
| Changsha | 1.1% | 1,921 | Changsha has 1.1% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (1,921; 10.9% of its active developers build AI). |
| Xiamen | 1% | 1,609 | Xiamen has 1% of China's city-located developers on GitHub (1,609; 11.9% of its active developers build AI). |
How this is measured
Mainland Chinese developers whose location names a city: each city's share of them. value_json: developers, ai_builder_pct (% of the city's developers active since January 2025 with an AI project, when at least 200 are active) and top_language. Overall: the share in the four largest cities. Source: public GitHub profiles and their public repositories (the teky search dataset; each finding's date is the date the data runs to). Population: GitHub accounts whose stated location we confirm as the UK or mainland China — the geocoder's country is re-checked against the location text (DevLocation), which drops "Cambridge, MA", "Stanford, CA", "Birmingham, AL" and "Philadelphia, PA"-style mis-codes and bare town names shared with a larger place abroad, and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan; organisation accounts and profiles with no GitHub account are excluded. It describes developers who publish on GitHub and state where they are, not every developer: it leans towards open-source contributors, academics and students, and Chinese developers also use Gitee, so China is under-represented. n = developers (GitHub accounts) unless the insight says otherwise.
Cite this
Free to quote with a credit and a link.
ProdReady Recruitment (2026). China's developer cities. Data to 24 September 2026. https://ProdReadyRecruitment.com/research/dev_china_cities
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