Abstract: The city of Suzhou expanded rapidly from 1550 Lo 1850, in terms of both urban area and population. The most important manifestation of this growth was the extension of the urban area beyond the city walls of the prefectural capital to include the suburban towns. As a result, Suzhou developed into a “super city” with the prefectural seal as its core and suburban towns as its satellites. This dynamic growth was attributable to urban industrial development. The spread of industry was not simply the movement of industry from the walled area of the city to the suburbs; rather it represented a rational distribution of industry based comparative advantages of regional specialization and division of labor. After three centuries of development, urban industry had become the leading sector of the Suzhou economy by the mid-Qing. Suzhou’s develolpment represented a new path in pre-modern Chinese urbanization, what Professor Fu Yiling has termed the “Su (zhou)-Hang(zhou)”path.