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China has seen the largest human migration in history, and the country’s rapid urbanisation has important consequences for public health. A provincial analysis of its urbanisation trends shows shifting and accelerating rural-to-urban migration across the country and accompanying rapid increases in city size and population. The growing disease burden in urban areas attributable to nutrition and lifestyle choices is a major public health challenge, as are troubling disparities in health-care access, vaccination coverage, and accidents and injuries in China’s rural-to-urban migrant population. Urban environmental quality, including air and water pollution, contributes to disease both in urban and in rural areas, and traffi c-related accidents pose a major public health threat as the country becomes increasingly motorised. To address the health challenges and maximise the benefi ts that accompany this rapid urbanisation, innovative health policies focuse