Through the selection of 172 urban–rural station pairs, this study noted that urbanization significantly influenced the dimming trend in sunshine duration in China from 1960 until it leveled off after 1990. During 1960–1989, rural dimming was around two-thirds the rate of urban dimming; this ratio generally shows a positive correlation with urbanization level. There may be an overestimation of dimming in China when a dataset with more urban-scale sites than rural-scale sites is applied.