World-class imagination space for China's three major urban agglomerations
Some indicators of urban agglomerations in my country have reached world-class levels, and the innovation vitality of the three major urban agglomerations has its own characteristics
Benchmarking world-class urban agglomerations and building my country's world-class urban agglomerations is a major event in my country's central and local governments in recent years.
Recently, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordination Office issued the "Key Points of Beijing's Work to Promote the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei in 2022", proposing that Beijing will take the construction of a modern capital metropolitan area as the guide to drive new breakthroughs in key areas of coordinated development.
Building a world-class urban agglomeration is a long-established goal.
In June 2015, the "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Development Plan" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council proposed to optimize and enhance the functions of the capital, play a core role, and build a world-class urban agglomeration.
Earlier, in June 2010, the "Notice on Printing and Distributing the Regional Planning of the Yangtze River Delta Region" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission proposed to build the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration into a "world-class urban agglomeration with strong international competitiveness".
In addition, based on the Pearl River Delta city cluster, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is about to emerge.
In February 2019, the "Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Development Plan" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council proposed to "build a dynamic and internationally competitive first-class bay area and world-class urban agglomeration".
At the end of the year, the "Outline of the Yangtze River Delta Regional Integrated Development Plan" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council proposed to "build a world-class urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta at a high level".
So far, all three major urban agglomerations have been elevated to major national strategies, and building world-class urban agglomerations has become an important starting point for China's future development.
my country's three major urban agglomerations have the advantage of scale
Although there are ten or twenty urban agglomerations in my country, the more mature ones are the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
The three urban agglomerations account for about 5% of the country's land area and have a population of about 420 million, contributing nearly half of China's GDP (for statistical reasons, excluding Hong Kong and Macau).
Shen Kaiyan, vice president of the Shanghai Economic Society and director of the Economic Research Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, introduced to the Beijing Think Tank that the Yangtze River Delta, as the most mature urban agglomeration in China, is known as the sixth largest urban agglomeration in the world, but it is far behind the other five urban agglomerations. Still quite obvious.
For example, the per capita GDP of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration is about 18,000 US dollars, which is only about one-third of the average per capita GDP of the other five world-class urban agglomerations in 2015.
Shen Kaiyan, who has been to the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany as a visiting scholar or trainee for related projects of the Shanghai Municipal Government, introduced that she found that there are scientific and technological innovation clusters in the world's five major urban agglomerations, such as New York, Boston, Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. Wait.
China's Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong have also formed technological clusters, but the overall urban agglomeration is still relatively weak in terms of technological innovation.
In September 2021, the "Natural Index - Scientific Research City 2021" data released at the plenary session of the 2021 Zhongguancun Forum showed that Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing entered the top 10.
From the perspective of urban agglomeration, the New York metropolitan area, Boston metropolitan area and Baltimore-Washington in the United States are all in the top 10 (only Philadelphia is not).
Finance is another measure.
Wang Hongxia, a researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Beijing Think Tank that taking Shanghai as an example, although Shanghai is currently an international financial center second only to London and New York, the number and asset scale of leading institutional investors in Shanghai are far lower than those in London, New York and London. New York and other mature international financial centers.
Moreover, Shanghai's financial market is not as open as other international financial centers. The proportion of foreign investors in London is as high as 40%, and the proportion of foreign investors in New York is also more than 16%, while foreign investors in Shanghai only account for the majority of investment. of about 1.2%.
Hou Dingkai, an associate professor at the Institute of Higher Education at East China Normal University, told the Beijing Think Tank that when it comes to the competitiveness of world-class urban agglomerations, industry, finance, technology, and culture are the most frequently mentioned observation indicators, but higher education resources are actually becoming the world's an important resource for urban agglomerations.
In world-class central cities such as London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo, the gathering of world-class universities has become a "standard", and the academic reputation of the university and the image of the city and country where it is located are "marketing cards" and complement each other.
According to data from Quacquarelli Symonds ("QS"), an international education market consulting firm, before (2019) and after (2022) the COVID-19 outbreak, among the top 100 universities in the World University Rankings, London has 6, 4 in Paris (3 in 2019), 3 in New York, and 2 in Tokyo.
There are only seven in mainland China, including three in Shanghai, two in Beijing, and one each in Hangzhou and Hefei.
In October 2021, the Regional Development Research Institute of Tsinghua University and the China Development Planning Research Institute jointly released the "Yangtze River Delta Human Development Process Report (2010-2020)", showing that education level is the main shortcoming of human development in the Yangtze River Delta region.
The report pointed out that the education index of the Yangtze River Delta region in 2020 is only 0.712, which is about 0.1 lower than the human development index (HDI) value of 0.814, which is a prominent shortcoming affecting human development in the region.
Among the 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region, there are still 24 prefecture-level cities whose education index is lower than 0.70, which is at a medium development level.
HDI was officially launched in 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme.
From the perspective of comprehensive strength, there is also a certain distance between the core cities of the three major urban agglomerations and the core cities of the five major urban agglomerations in the world.
According to the "Top 500 Global Cities 2021" released by the Global City Lab, among the top 50 cities, only Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou are on the list in China.
New York, Washington, Boston and Philadelphia, the four core cities of the eastern Atlantic coast urban agglomeration, are in the top 50.
The innovation vitality of the three major urban agglomerations has its own characteristics
What is the level of the three major urban agglomerations in my country?
Zeng Gang, the dean and professor of the Urban Development Research Institute of East China Normal University, told the Beijing Think Tank that the cities within the three major urban agglomerations used to be more competitive.
For example, competition for investment, especially foreign investment, research projects from the central government, and even talent, because the cities within the urban agglomeration are relatively close geographically and spatially connected.
"The situation has changed a lot during the 'Thirteenth Five-Year Plan' period," Zeng Gang said. Cities within the three urban agglomerations began to emphasize that they should become "one family", and more turned to cooperation.
In some cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, some investments are not necessarily required.
Because the land resources of these megacities are relatively tight, investment should be screened.
"Unlike before, as long as there is investment, now it is slowly starting to turn more to high-quality development."
Ye Tanglin, a professor at the School of Urban Economics and Public Administration of Capital University of Economics and Business, compared the comprehensive innovation capabilities of the three major urban agglomerations from 2012 to 2019, and concluded that the comprehensive innovation ability score of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration increased from 0.518 to 0.970. The innovation comprehensive ability score of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration increased from 0.181 to 0.473, and the innovation comprehensive ability score of the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration increased from 0.157 to 0.509.
During the same period, the innovation efficiency of the three major urban agglomerations also changed a lot.
The Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration increased from 0.72 to 0.93, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration increased from 0.35 to 0.81, and the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration increased from 0.74 to 0.94.
From a vertical perspective, the three major urban agglomerations in China have obvious development "traces".
From a horizontal perspective, the gap between the three major urban agglomerations in China is still relatively obvious.
Shen Kaiyan introduced that development vitality refers to future potential, which can be manifested from strategic emerging industries, leading industries, or corporate vitality (such as unicorn companies, that is, start-ups with a valuation of more than 1 billion US dollars), etc. reflected.
Since 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued a list of "Single Champion Demonstration Enterprises" every year, similar to "Unicorn Enterprises".
So far, 5 batches have been announced. Judging from the number of these 5 batches of national individual champions, the Yangtze River Delta is the largest, showing the distribution trend of southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and Shanghai.
According to data from CB Insights, an international market consulting firm, the number of global "unicorn" companies exceeded 1,000 in early February 2020.
Among them, there are 68 in Shanghai, 64 in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and 32 in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration.
Shen Kaiyan explained that in terms of quantity, the Yangtze River Delta is the largest.
In terms of volume, Beijing's unicorn companies have the highest valuation, and ByteDance contributed nearly half of the valuation of all unicorn companies in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
But from the median, unicorns in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area are the most competitive.
"From three measurement perspectives, the three urban agglomerations have their own advantages and characteristics."
Zhou Mi, director and professor of the China Urban and Regional Economy Research Center of Nankai University, told the Beijing Think Tank that the synergy of the three major urban agglomerations in terms of development vitality, innovation ability, industrial structure, factor flow and other indicators showed obvious "centripetal, clustered, linkage" feature.
In simple terms, the “central city agglomeration” feature of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration is more obvious; the echelon structure and clustering characteristics of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration are more distinct; the linkage and development vitality of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area urban agglomeration are more prominent.
Specifically, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration has Beijing as its core, and other cities maintain a high degree of economic ties with Beijing, followed by Tianjin and Shijiazhuang, Hebei.
The combination of Beijing-Tianjin twin-city linkage and regional central cities such as Shijiazhuang has formed a development pattern led by core cities and supported by specific spatial structures.
Among the five major cities in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, Shanghai has the strongest external economic ties, but the radiation capabilities of other major cities are also relatively balanced.
The Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration has strong economic links such as the flow of factors, reasonable industrial structure gradient, strong innovation ability and strong competitiveness, and is changing from "a group of cities" to "urban cluster".
Compared with the other two urban agglomerations, the strength of economic ties between cities and central cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area urban agglomeration is the highest.
"This shows that the urban agglomeration in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area also has the characteristic of 'leading the central city', and the polarization effect of the core city is significant," Zhou Mi said.
Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei's financial resource allocation capabilities are more prominent
Finance also plays an irreplaceable role in the development of urban agglomerations.
Lin Muxi, a professor at the School of Economics of Liaoning University, wrote in an article that theory and practice show that the process and stage of financial and urban agglomeration economic (coordinated) development are associated with each other, and the financial economic force formed by financial potential actually serving the real economy has become the driving force of urban agglomeration. An important driving force for the coordinated development of the economy.
Zeng Gang introduced that since my country divides and manages financial development, the financial administration in the Yangtze River Delta region is managed by two branches in Shanghai and Nanjing, which has led to the dislocation of the Yangtze River Delta city group and the financial district.
This has also become an obstacle to the coordinated financial development of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration to a certain extent.
A spokesman for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Development Office of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region told Beijing Think Tank that the New York, San Francisco and Tokyo Bay Areas are financial, technological and industrial hubs respectively, while the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has all three.
The two special administrative regions of the Greater Bay Area and the nine mainland cities have different and complementary advantages.
Hong Kong is not only an international financial, shipping and trade center, but also enjoys advantages in professional services and scientific research.
Guangdong Province is a high-tech industrial belt with global influence, of which Shenzhen is a hub for gathering innovation and technology resources and talents from the mainland.
Aside from Hong Kong and Macau, Zhou Mi believes that the Pearl River Delta region is also a relatively active region in my country. The regional economic strength is relatively strong, the market development degree is relatively high, and the correlation between industries is relatively good.
Zhou Mi said that the disadvantage of the Pearl River Delta region is that the regional financial development is unbalanced, and a financial cooperation and coordination mechanism has not been formed.
The imperfect financial infrastructure affects the flow of financial factors.
For the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Zhou Mi believes that the advantages of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region are Beijing's outstanding total financial resources and resource allocation capabilities.
Among them, Beijing's comprehensive financial strength is the most prominent, and the securities industry is relatively developed; Tianjin has bright spots in the development of special special finance; Hebei's financial development gap is relatively large, and traditional finance such as banks are the main ones.
Wang Peng, a researcher at the School of Economics of Jinan University, told the Beijing Think Tank that no matter which city group it is, the development of the financial industry has not yet well reflected the inherent nature of enterprise development.
This has a lot to do with China's stock market and financial market, that is, the rise or fall of a listed company's stock cannot well reflect the performance development level of a company.
There is still room for improvement in regional coordinated development
Another obvious feature of the three major urban agglomerations is that the coordinated development among the cities within the urban agglomeration is not enough.
Li Guoping, Dean and Professor of the Capital Development Research Institute of Peking University, introduced to Xinjing Think Tank that compared with the Yangtze River Delta and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region will be more obvious in this regard because of the industrial linkages between Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. low degree.
Beijing is dominated by electronic information, biomedicine, finance and service industries, and Hebei is dominated by steel, coal, electric power and other industries close to raw material industries and energy. The industrial structures of the three places are quite different and broken, and no one The upstream and downstream relationships of common industries have also led to a small amount of technology transactions in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei.
Du Yonghong, an associate professor at the School of Statistics of Beijing Normal University, and others pointed out that Beijing is a highland for the publication of papers, patent inventions and technology transactions in my country. Not much.
The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei three regions have not fully demonstrated collaborative innovation, nor have they demonstrated their location advantages. In particular, the advantages of patent cooperation and technology contract export turnover that are directly related to the business behavior of enterprises are not obvious. The collaborative innovation of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei still remains. A lot of room for improvement.
Zeng Gang introduced that, in fact, the technology trading markets in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are also separate.
One of the more popular ways of cooperation now is hierarchical diffusion, that is, patent cooperation has more cooperation between “Beijing and Shanghai” and “Beijing and Shenzhen”, but less cooperation within the three major urban agglomerations.
"Because the problems encountered by researchers in Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen are similar in their scientific research work, it is easy to form a consensus and reach a win-win cooperation plan."
Wang Peng believes that this is because the mutual assistance mechanism within the urban agglomeration is still not good enough, which may have a lot to do with the different levels of regional development, because the concept of local protectionism between cities is still relatively heavy, and exchanges and mutual The willingness to cooperate is not very strong. "This is also typical in the Pearl River Delta."
The problem is that the three major urban agglomerations are also facing more serious problems.
Wang Hongxia, who is also engaged in population economics research, said that from the perspective of the core elements of the competitiveness of urban agglomerations, there are still two bottlenecks (potential constraints) in the construction of the three major urban agglomerations, namely the impact of population aging on population mobility and labor force. The impact and challenges of supply, as well as the constraints brought by the rising production and operation costs of land and manpower.
At the same time, rising labor costs and high land costs are common in my country. Under the competitive advantage of relatively cheap labor and land costs in neighboring countries, it will inevitably have a certain impact on further attracting the transfer of global production and service industries. "If it cannot be effectively solved, it will inevitably further affect the construction process of world-class urban agglomerations," said Wang Hongxia.
Getting closer to the goal of a world-class urban agglomeration
Although China's three major urban agglomerations are still far away from the five world-class urban agglomerations, each urban agglomeration faces its own challenges, but its advantages are also obvious.
Wang Hongxia said that compared with other world-class urban agglomerations, the common advantage of my country's three major urban agglomerations lies in their huge population size.
Even in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration with the smallest population, the population size (about 110 million) is about 1.5 times that of the largest urban agglomeration on the Pacific coast of Japan among the five largest urban agglomerations in the world.
The Yangtze River Delta region with the largest population in my country has a total population of more than 200 million. The huge population size and market size are also one of the important factors that help the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration to become the sixth largest urban agglomeration in the world.
Another outstanding advantage is that "the integration of transportation within the three major urban agglomerations in my country is relatively high," Wang Hongxia said. This benefits from the increasing improvement of my country's high-speed rail and inter-city rapid transportation, and the "one-hour commuting circle" has already covered the interior of the urban agglomeration. In most cities, the three major urban agglomerations have basically achieved the same city effect, which has greatly promoted the construction of world-class urban agglomerations.
In recent years, the three major urban agglomerations have also made considerable achievements.
In some aspects, it has reached the level of world-class urban agglomerations, and some indicators have even surpassed some of the five world-class urban agglomerations.
Taking the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as an example, it has successfully ranked among the world-class urban agglomerations in some aspects.
On February 28, 2022, the Guangzhou Daily Data and Digital Research Institute (GDI Think Tank) released the "Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Collaborative Innovation Development Report (2021)", showing that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area "Patent Cooperation Treaty" (PCT) in the past five years ) has a total of about 122,000 pieces, second only to Tokyo Bay Area, 2.88 times and 3.40 times that of New York Bay Area and San Francisco Bay Area.
The number of PCT disclosures in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has maintained a positive growth, with a rapid growth rate from 2016 to 2018. Although the growth rate has slowed down since 2019, the compound annual growth rate still ranks first among the four major bay areas.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong-Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Development Office said that according to the Outline Plan, Hong Kong, as the core engine of regional development, will continue to leverage its comparative advantages to become better and stronger, and to enhance its radiating and driving role in surrounding areas.
According to the "Economic Daily" report, since the implementation of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development strategy in 2014, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei three regions have continued to strengthen synergy and linkage, and the non-capital functions have achieved phased results.
Key areas such as industry, transportation, ecological environment and public services have taken the lead in achieving breakthroughs, and high-quality development has steadily advanced.
Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei takes the establishment of an industrial cooperation platform as the starting point, and actively carries out various forms of docking activities, and industrial docking has entered a fast lane.
Data show that by the end of 2021, Hebei Province had undertaken a total of 29,000 legal entities and 11,000 industrial activity units transferred from Beijing and Tianjin.
Tianjin Binhai-Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park has been established for 5 years, and has closely promoted the cooperative development with the Beijing Zhongguancun Demonstration Zone, with a total of more than 3,000 registered enterprises.
Among them, Beijing enterprises account for one-third of all newly registered enterprises, and technology-based enterprises account for 40%. It has become an important cooperation platform between Beijing and Tianjin.
The scientific and technological innovation chain was formed at an accelerated pace.
Since 2014, the total technology transaction volume exported from Beijing to Tianjin and Hebei has reached 176.04 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of more than 20%.
The more dramatic change is GDP.
In 2021, the total GDP of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region will be 9.6 trillion yuan, which is 1.7 times that of 2013;
This gap will be further narrowed.
In October 2020, the "Implementation Plan for Establishing a New Mechanism for More Effective Regional Coordinated Development" issued by Beijing proposes that by 2035, the new regional coordinated development mechanism will play an important role in promoting the balance between the north and the south and narrowing the gap between urban and rural development. , the core functions of the capital are more optimized, and the framework of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei world-class urban agglomeration is basically formed.
For world-class urban agglomerations, Shen Kaiyan believes that there has never been a standard concept for world-class urban agglomerations.
Generally speaking, the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration is not included.
However, the advantages of the Yangtze River Delta in terms of economic aggregates are also obvious.
According to Wang Hongxia, the total GDP of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration in 2021 has basically reached or even exceeded the Atlantic coast urban agglomeration in the northeastern United States (also known as the Boshua urban agglomeration), the Great Lakes urban agglomeration in North America, and the London-centered urban agglomeration in south-central England. And the level of Japan's Pacific Rim urban agglomeration.
Beijing News reporter Xiao Longping intern Jin Sihan