In 2022, no new cities will cross the trillion-dollar threshold, while the alternate cities standing outside the threshold are mainly the third-tier cities in the eastern region.
Economic data of 2022 are released one after another in various places. Judging from the cities with published data, the ranking of 24 cities with GDP trillion will not change much this year, but the two cities that attract people’s attention are Chengdu and Chongqing: one has crossed the threshold of 2 trillion, and the other has surpassed Guangzhou to become the "fourth city".
In 2022, no new cities will cross the trillion-dollar threshold, while the alternate cities standing outside the threshold are mainly the third-tier cities in the eastern region, showing the differences between the eastern, central and western regions.
Chengdu-Chongqing Gemini is eye-catching
In 2021, the GDP of Chengdu has exceeded 1.99 trillion yuan, only a stone’s throw from the threshold of 2 trillion yuan. In 2022, Chengdu’s regional GDP reached 2,081.75 billion yuan, an increase of 2.8% over the previous year at comparable prices, under the adverse impact of several rounds of epidemic shocks and high temperature power cuts last year.
Chengdu has thus become the seventh city to cross the threshold of GDP2 of 2 trillion. At present, four echelons, namely, 4 trillion, 3 trillion, 2 trillion and 1 trillion, have been formed in the city clubs with GDP trillion. Shanghai and Beijing crossed 4 trillion in 2021, Shenzhen crossed 3 trillion in 2021, and Chongqing, Guangzhou, Suzhou and Chengdu were 2 trillion echelons.
Among the top ten cities, Wuhan is expected to surpass Hangzhou. According to the work report of Wuhan Municipal Government, it is estimated that the GDP of Wuhan will reach about 1.9 trillion yuan in 2022. According to the data released by the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Statistics, the regional GDP of Hangzhou in 2022 was 1,875.3 billion yuan. Affected by the epidemic, Wuhan will fall behind Hangzhou in GDP ranking in 2020.
Compared with the ranking changes of Wuhan and Hangzhou, the ranking competition between Chongqing and Guangzhou attracts more attention. Chongqing and Guangzhou successively released economic data for 2022: in 2022, the regional GDP of Guangzhou was 2,883.900 billion yuan, up by 1.0% year-on-year; Chongqing achieved a regional GDP of 2,912.903 billion yuan, an increase of 2.6% over the previous year. Chongqing surpassed Guangzhou by about 29 billion yuan.
In fact, in recent years, Chongqing’s GDP has continued to grow and is approaching Guangzhou. In 2019, the gap between the two was only 2.3 billion yuan. In the first half of 2020, Chongqing’s GDP surpassed Guangzhou for the first time, which triggered a heated debate on the "fourth city" dispute between Chongqing and Guangzhou. However, with the effective control of the epidemic in that year, Guangzhou narrowly beat Chongqing with a slight advantage of 1.6 billion yuan by the end of the year and regained the fourth position.
In 2021, Guangzhou didn’t give Chongqing another chance, and its quarterly GDP remained the fourth city in the country, which widened the gap with Chongqing’s GDP and expanded its leading edge to 33.8 billion yuan. In the first quarter of 2022, Guangzhou expanded its leading edge over Chongqing to 35.3 billion yuan. However, in the first half of 2022 and the first three quarters of 2022, Chongqing overtook Guangzhou and maintained its leading position throughout the year.
From the specific indicator data, in 2022, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Guangzhou increased by 0.8% year-on-year; The city’s investment in fixed assets decreased by 2.1% year-on-year; The total retail sales of social consumer goods in the city was 1,029.815 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.7%; The city’s total foreign trade import and export value was 1,094.84 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.1%.
The added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Chongqing increased by 3.2% over the previous year; The investment in fixed assets in the whole city increased by 0.7% over the previous year; The total retail sales of social consumer goods reached 1.39 trillion yuan, down 0.3% from the previous year; Chongqing’s total import and export value reached 815.84 billion yuan, a record high, up 2% over the previous year.
Is Chongqing’s overtaking Guangzhou only a temporary lead under special circumstances, or does it indicate the complete subversion of the ranking pattern of the two cities?
Yi Xiaoguang, president of Chongqing Comprehensive Economic Research Institute, told CBN that in the medium and long term, it is a trend that Chongqing’s economic aggregate exceeds Guangzhou, and Chongqing’s land space is far greater than Guangzhou’s. Although the eastern cities started early and developed rapidly, with the development of the western region and the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the basic conditions for the development of western provinces and cities have been greatly improved.
However, Yi Xiaoguang also said that although Chongqing surpassed Guangzhou in terms of economic aggregate, China’s economy still showed a gradient development pattern as a whole. There is still a gap between Chongqing and Guangzhou in output intensity, industrial structure and industrial system matching. It is still the first step to catch up with the economic scale, and Chongqing still has to catch up with it in terms of development level and per capita wealth income.
There are obvious differences between the eastern, central and western regions
The performance of Chengdu and Chongqing is relatively conspicuous, which has enhanced the influence of cities in the central and western regions, but the pattern of the eastern, central and western regions has not changed. Judging from the distribution of club cities with GDP trillion, especially the distribution of alternate cities, the regional development differences between the eastern, central and western regions are still obvious.
Judging from the distribution of city clubs with GDP of one trillion, there are four trillion cities in Jiangsu, namely Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi and Nantong, three in Guangdong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Foshan, and two in Zhejiang, Shandong and Fujian. Together with Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, there are 16 cities in the eastern region with GDP exceeding one trillion.
The cities with GDP exceeding one trillion in the central and western regions include Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Hefei and Xi ‘an. Except Chongqing, which is a municipality directly under the central government, the rest are all provincial capital cities that make efforts to develop and implement the strategy of strengthening the province. In addition, there is no second GDP trillion city in these provinces, and there is an obvious gap between the provincial sub-central cities and the provincial capitals and eastern cities.
No new cities entered the GDP trillion club last year. Changzhou and Yantai, which ranked 25th and 26th in urban GDP in 2021, did not cross the trillion-dollar threshold. In 2022, the regional GDP of Changzhou reached 955.01 billion yuan, an increase of 3.5% over the previous year; Yantai’s GDP was 951.586 billion yuan, up 5.1% year-on-year.
Changzhou and Yantai are the fifth city in Jiangsu’s economic aggregate and the third city in Shandong, respectively, and are expected to enter the GDP trillion club this year. However, many capital cities in the central and western regions and northeastern cities are still far from the trillion threshold. Dalian, Shenyang and Kunming are the top cities in the northeast and central and western regions outside the trillion-dollar threshold, and their total economic output is still at the level of 700 billion.
It can be seen that this gap between the eastern and western regions is more obvious in the distribution of alternate cities. With the powerful major provincial capital cities in the central and western regions listed in the GDP trillion club, the cities queuing to cross the trillion threshold are still dominated by eastern cities.
In 2021, the cities with regional GDP below one trillion yuan and above 700 billion yuan include Changzhou, Yantai, Tangshan, Xuzhou, Dalian, Wenzhou, Shenyang, Kunming, Changchun, Xiamen and Weifang. In addition to Changzhou and Yantai mentioned above, Xuzhou ranks sixth in Jiangsu, third in Wenzhou, third in Zhejiang, third in Xiamen and fourth in Weifang.
Yi Xiaoguang said that the distribution of trillions of cities reflects the differences of regional economic development in China. On the whole, it is still a gradient development pattern of the east, the west and the east, and there is a clear gap between the central and western regions and the eastern region; Regionally, the imbalance of regional development within the central and western provinces is also obvious. Of course, with the implementation of major regional policies and the improvement of the industrial development foundation in the central and western regions, the development potential of cities in the central and western regions is still great, which will gradually promote the change of the whole pattern.
