China is still at an early stage of industrialization and urbanization. At present industry is the main economic activity within most Chinese cities. This paper represents the first attempt to classify all of China’s 295 cities according to industrial functions, using 1984 data. Working within the framework of the economic base theory of urban development, the authors define city industry functions as consisting of the following three elements: (1) Specialized department of the city; (2) functional intensity (degree of specialization), and (3) functional scale (the size of industrial output of the city). The industrial function classification method used here is based on a combination of all three elements.In the present study a number of different techniques were originally applied including principal components analysis, several methods of hierarchical cluster analysis, the Nelson measure and a variety of more traditional methods. On the basis of these preliminary studies it was eventually decided to base the classification on a composite measure consisting of the ward’s Error Method of hierarchical cluster analysis and a supplementary application of the Nelson measure. In this manner the 295 Chinese cities have been grouped into 3 main categories with 19 sub-categories and 54 functional groups.