In the new stage of economic transformation and upgrading, the role of central cities in regional economic development has become increasingly prominent.
Central cities include municipalities directly under the Central Government, capital cities, cities with separate plans, and some major economic cities. At present, there are 36 cities in the first three categories, but in addition, some ordinary prefecture-level cities are also strong.
The First Financial Reporter sorted out the top 20 GDPs of ordinary prefecture-level cities in 2019. Among them, the top 19 cities all exceeded the 500 billion yuan mark, and 3 more cities entered the ranks of GDP trillion clubs, namely Suzhou, Wuxi and Foshan.
In addition, in terms of provinces, among the top 20, Jiangsu accounts for 8 and Zhejiang accounts for 4. It can be said that the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions are the strongest regions of ordinary prefecture-level cities, and the total of the two provinces amounts to 60%.
3 cities exceed trillion, 3 cities quasi trillion
The top 20 GDP-level cities in 2019 are: Suzhou, Wuxi, Foshan, Quanzhou, Dongguan, Nantong, Yantai, Changzhou, Xuzhou, Tangshan, Wenzhou, Yangzhou, Shaoxing, Yancheng, Weifang, Jiaxing, Taizhou, Taizhou, Luoyang and Xiangyang.
The strongest Suzhou's 2019 GDP has reached 1923.58 billion yuan, nearly two trillion yuan, more than 700 billion yuan more than the second-ranked Wuxi, and it is in a leading position.
Although it is just an ordinary prefecture-level city, Suzhou's GDP has far surpassed many cities with administrative levels higher than its own. Last year, Suzhou's economic aggregate ranked sixth among all cities in the country, second only to Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou's four first-tier cities and the municipality Chongqing.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, with the development of the export-oriented economy, Suzhou's economic aggregate expanded rapidly. Several county-level cities under its jurisdiction, Kunshan, Zhangjiagang, Changshu, etc., have long been in the top five of China's top 100 counties.
Judging from several important economic indicators, Suzhou can be said to be "unmatched" in ordinary prefecture-level cities. For example, in terms of capital stock, Suzhou had exceeded 3.16 trillion yuan last year, while Wuxi, the second largest, was only 1.76 trillion yuan. As another example, Suzhou has reached 7052 high-tech enterprises, which not only ranks first among ordinary prefecture-level cities, but also ranks first among all second-tier cities among all cities in the country, after four first-tier cities in the north, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
Like Suzhou, with the development of export-oriented industries, Wuxi, which is located in southern Jiangsu, has also experienced rapid economic development after the reform and opening up. In Jiangsu Province, Wuxi has followed Suzhou for many years, and its GDP ranks second in Jiangsu. It is only in recent years that Nanjing, the provincial capital, has "struggled to become stronger", and in 2014 the GDP finally surpassed Wuxi and rose to the second place. However, Wuxi's advantages are still very prominent. Last year, Wuxi's per capita GDP was as high as 180,000 yuan. It not only ranked first in Jiangsu's cities, but also ranked first in the country's ordinary prefecture-level cities.
Foshan, ranked third, has a GDP of over 1 trillion yuan in 2019, and has become the third city in Guangdong Province after Guangzhou and Shenzhen to have a GDP of more than one trillion yuan. Last year, the three industrial structures of Foshan were 1.5: 56.5: 42.0, and the industrial manufacturing industry occupied an absolute dominant position. Including equipment manufacturing, household appliances, ceramic building materials, furniture, metal products and other industrial economic strength is outstanding. Emerging industries such as optoelectronics, new materials, biopharmaceuticals, robots, and new energy vehicles are booming.
In addition to these three cities, Quanzhou, Dongguan and Nantong are all in the GDP 900 billion echelon, becoming a reserve army of trillions of clubs. Among them, the GDP of Quanzhou reached 994.666 billion yuan last year, only one step away from the trillion mark. However, in the first quarter of this year, the city's GDP fell by 10.3%, and there are still many variables in its ability to advance.
Ding Changfa, an associate professor in the Department of Economics of Xiamen University, analyzed the First Financial Reporter. Quanzhou ’s Jinjiang, Shishi and other places have a large number of foreign populations. Under the influence of the epidemic, many productions in the first quarter pressed the pause button, and employees returned to work slowly. The quarterly base is also relatively high, so this year's decline is relatively large.
Jiangsu and Zhejiang prefecture-level cities
Judging from the distribution of the top 20 provinces, there are as many as 8 in Jiangsu, 4 in Zhejiang, 2 in Guangdong and Shandong, and 1 in Fujian, Hebei, Henan and Hubei.
The relatively balanced overall urban development is one of the characteristics of Jiangsu's regional economic development. The online ridicule of "Bulk Jiangsu" can also be said to reflect this feature. The data shows that the GDP of 13 prefectures and cities in Jiangsu is currently over 300 billion yuan, the only one in the country. In addition, due to the large number of economic big cities, Jiangsu has the most cities approved to build subways, with a total of 6 cities in Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Xuzhou and Nantong.
Zhejiang's prefecture-level cities are also relatively strong, with a total of Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Jiaxing and Taizhou shortlisted in the top 20. Considering that there are only 11 prefecture-level cities in Zhejiang, including Hangzhou and Ningbo, the two vice-provincial cities, Zhejiang has a high percentage of finalists.
A total of 12 cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are shortlisted in the top 20, accounting for three-fifths, which also highlights the balanced development of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
Tian Boping, a researcher at the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed the first financial reporter. The development of ordinary prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang has several main factors: First, the natural geographical conditions of Jiangsu and Zhejiang are good, and they are located in coastal areas, and the transportation is convenient; It is due to historical development factors, the foundation is relatively good, the population is large, and the business atmosphere is strong; the third is that after the reform and opening up, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas are relatively emancipated and have seized the development opportunities well.
In contrast, Guangdong, the first economic province, and Shandong, the third economic province, have only two cities shortlisted. Among them, Guangdong can be said to be the most unevenly developed province in the coastal area, mainly concentrated in the Pearl River Delta, especially the two major sub-provincial cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, and the two manufacturing centers of Foshan and Dongguan. Statistics show that the total GDP of these four cities currently accounts for nearly 70% of Guangdong.
In terms of larger regional distribution, 18 of the top 20 are located in the eastern coastal area, while the vast majority of the central and western and northeastern regions account for only 2 (Luoyang and Xiangyang), all from the central region, and ranked 19th and 20th. Bit. It can be seen that despite the rapid development of provincial capital cities in the central and western regions in recent years, and the gap between the coastal first- and second-tier cities is small, there is still a large gap between the ordinary prefecture-level cities in the central and western regions and the coastal regions. In the central and western regions, provincial capital cities are the unipolar core cities of most provinces, and other ordinary prefecture-level cities in the province have relatively limited factor resources that can be gathered, and there is a huge gap with provincial capital cities.
Different development paths in the future
Compared with municipalities directly under the Central Government, provincial capital cities, and planned cities, the economic major cities in ordinary prefecture-level cities are mainly industrial manufacturing, and many cities have a relatively high proportion of traditional manufacturing. For these manufacturing cities, the future Although it is also necessary to accelerate the development of the service industry, on the whole, we must rely on the existing industrial foundation to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of the industrial manufacturing industry.
However, due to the difference in geographical location, these cities also have different paths of transformation, upgrading and development. Some manufacturing cities close to the first-tier cities and the second-tier leading cities, in the process of construction of the metropolitan area in recent years, have well accepted the spillover of the metropolis, and achieved industrial division and complementation with the central metropolis, and the transformation has achieved remarkable results.
A typical example is Dongguan. At present, the smartphone industry has become its most representative industry. The world-famous Huawei, OPPO, vivo and other big-name mobile phones are produced in Dongguan. In 2019, the added value of the five pillar industries of Dongguan Industry reached 313.378 billion yuan, an increase of 10.8%.
"Dongguan is 'a good place to cool off under a big tree.'" Ding Changfa said that Dongguan's transformation and upgrading is relatively early and the intensity is also great. After 2008, many traditional manufacturing industries such as clothing and toys have been transferred out. At the same time, Dongguan is close to Shenzhen, and land, labor, and housing prices are much cheaper than Shenzhen, which has attracted many Shenzhen industries such as Huawei terminals.
Peng Peng, executive chairman of the Guangdong Provincial System Reform Research Association, analyzed the first financial reporter. In the past ten years, Dongguan's emerging industries have developed rapidly, mainly because they have undertaken a large number of high-tech industry spillovers in Shenzhen, and their economic development toughness has continued to increase.
Statistics show that in 2019, Dongguan's national high-tech enterprises have reached 6,228, second only to Suzhou in second-tier cities.
Similar to Dongguan, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Nantong, Jiaxing, Shaoxing, Foshan and other manufacturing cities are close to first-tier cities or second-tier leading cities. In the future, by cooperating with the "big tree" next to them, industrial transformation and upgrading can be better achieved.
However, some major manufacturing cities such as Quanzhou, Xuzhou, Wenzhou, Yantai, etc., are far from first-tier cities and second-tier leading cities, making the transformation and upgrading more difficult. For example, the number of high-tech enterprises in Quanzhou, a private economic city, is only 685, and that in Yantai is only 635, which is very different from the economic markets of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta.
Ding Changfa said that although Quanzhou's economic development has been good in recent years, there are still many shortcomings in the high-tech industry, among which talents are the biggest shortcomings. In the future, Quanzhou still needs to improve the business environment and the level of government public services. Through various measures, it will vigorously attract talents.
For manufacturing markets that are far away from the "big tree", in the future, they will still need to "practice their internal skills", accelerate the improvement of urban energy levels, increase the priority of central urban areas, accelerate the development of modern service industries, and play a better role in Leading and radiation effects in the area.
For example, Wenzhou proposed that by 2025, Wenzhou would become an important "south gate" for the integration development of the Yangtze River Delta and a "bridgehead" for docking between Fujian and Taiwan, and truly play an important role in the third pole of economic growth in the province. The total proportion is more than 45%.
In April this year, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Key Tasks for New Urbanization Construction and Urban-Rural Integration Development in 2020", which called for the enhancement of energy levels and core competitiveness of central cities. Optimize the development of central cities such as municipalities directly under the Central Government, provincial capital cities, planned cities, and important node cities, strengthen the guarantee of factors such as land use, and optimize the layout of major productive forces.
It can be seen that important node cities will be the focus of future development. Cities including Xuzhou, Wenzhou, Quanzhou, Xiangyang, Yantai and other cities are far from first-tier cities and second-tier leading cities. However, these cities have great influence on the economic development of the surrounding areas, and they are important node cities. In the future, these cities will better promote regional economic development by accelerating the construction of provincial sub-centers and regional central cities, and improving the functions and energy levels of central cities.
Author: Lin Xiaozhao