If a village has 1 mil, then China is probably entirely made up of something like 40 cities and 500 villages, plus some smaller stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_pop...
From the perspective, I would think a city of 800k is definitely midsized if you compare with China.
I'm from Brazil, and we would definitely say 1 million people is a midsized city there (I don't live there anymore). For example, have you ever heard of Campinas? Well, it has a population of over 1.2 million people, and everyone I know around the area call it a midsized city.
But no, no one in their right mind would say a 1 million people city is a village :D.
Non-major cities do, but not “small rural villages”.
The 100th-ranked US city (Huntsville, AL) has a population of 225k. (The 113th, Fayetville, NC, has just under 210k.)
San Francisco, with 808k population, would rank 126th in China. Not "small rural", but definitely a 2nd or 3rd tier city at best. (The comparable Chinese city, Anqing, is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Anhi Province, and has, to boot, 631 years on SF.)
Consider that Wuhan, a city in China you'd likely never have heard of prior to early 2020, has a population of 11 million, more than any US city, and ranks 9th overall in population within China.
China: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_pop...>
US: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...>
Anquing: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anqing>