Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) released the Blue Book of city competitiveness: Report on the competitiveness of China's cities 2006 on Mar. 20. According to the report, Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen are the top five among 200 candidate cities in terms of comprehensive competitiveness through calculation and comparison.

The competitiveness of mainland ranks the 34th worldwide

With its own framework and method, the report found out by comparing the competitiveness of 100 countries and regions worldwide that the top ten countries and regions are US, Germany, Japan, UK, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Canada, Italy and Belgium, while Chinese mainland is only ranked the 34th.

The list includes nine cities from HK, Macao and Taiwan for the first time

PhD Ni Pengfei from CASS, the initiator of the report noted that by making a comparison with the previous three reports, the current one for the first time included nine cities from HK, Macao and Taiwan into its research scope, among which seven cities have been selected into the top 20.

Beijing's comprehensive index ranks the 4th

This time, Beijing was the fourth most competitive cities following Hong Kong, Taipei and Shanghai and the second among mainland cities, surpassing Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

PhD Ni further noted that the rise of Beijing's city competitiveness shows the real progress the capital has made. Deeply affected by SARS in 2003, Beijing fell behind Shenzhen and Guangzhou. It is said that Beijing gained advantages from newly introduced indexes such as education, talents as well as sci-tech innovation this time.

Further reading

Top 20 cities in terms of city competitiveness:

Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Kaohsiung, Macao, Hsinchu, Keelung, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Suzhou, Tainan, Tianjin, Xiamen, Dalian, Wuxi, Shenyang and Qingdao.

By People's Daily Online