The Chinese economy and society have gone through major changes since 1978, with some regions more richly developed than others. How and when did cross-regional disparity occur? What can we learn from historical development? We document strong evidence of persistence in China’s regional distribution of development since the 3rd millennium BCE. Using archaeological and historical data, we find that regions in closer proximity to prehistoric cradles of civilization (prominent walled cities) that flourished between 3000-1700 BCE but disappeared thereafter continued to outperform subsequently in prosperity (as measured by population density) and human capital achievement (senior officials density and book author density).