How Many Software Developers Are There in China? Analyzing Conflicting Statistics

At the 2024 Open Atom Developer Conference, a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology official released official data showing that China now has over 9.4 million software developers.

Key points:

China’s open‑source community ranks second worldwide in participant growth.

The country’s self‑built open‑source collaboration platform is in trial operation with nearly 1.5 million registered users.

According to the official figure, the developer count could surpass 10 million by 2025.

Comparing with global estimates, Evans Data reported 26.9 million developers worldwide in 2022, projected to reach 28.7 million in 2024, with Asia accounting for about 33 % (≈9.6 million). Subtracting India’s share (≈9.3 %), the remaining Asian developers are roughly 6.9 million, suggesting China’s count is around 5 million.

JetBrains’ survey, however, puts China’s developer population at 3.885 million and the global total at 19.6 million, a discrepancy of about 10 million compared with Evans Data.

Using JetBrains’ global figure, China would represent 19.7 % of developers, which translates to roughly 5.74 million developers—still far below the official 9.4 million.

The differences stem mainly from varying definitions of “software developer” across research firms.

Nevertheless, the Ministry’s data suggests that, if current growth continues, China will exceed 10 million developers by 2025, driven by the proliferation of AI‑assisted programming tools that lower entry barriers.

Beyond sheer numbers, the article argues that the industry should shift focus from increasing headcount to improving technical quality, encouraging developers to become innovators rather than mere followers.

What are your thoughts on this transition?