Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen top ranking of metropolitan area power

Metropolitan area power is one of the most basic indicators to gauge the core city. This major item focuses on not only its economy and population, but also its population concentration and structure, as well as its ability as an economic center.

In 2020, core cities across the country registered positive growth except Wuhan, which was hard hit by COVID-19, as their GDP growth rate increasing by 3 percent points on average. The strong resilience of the core cities has driven China's economy to achieve a growth rate of 2.3 percent despite economic contraction in other major countries.

The major indicator of metropolitan area power encompasses three sub-indicators: economic scale, metropolitan area quality, and enterprise agglomeration, including 14 sets of indicator data such as GDP scale, resident population, DID population and listed enterprises on the main board.

Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have retained the top three spots in the ranking of metropolitan area power, with a remarkable deviation value. The other cities in the top 10 include Guangzhou, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Tianjin and Wuhan. Compared with the ranking in 2019, most of the top 10 cities remained unchanged, while Chengdu rose one place and Tianjin dropped three places.

Compared with 2019, Xi'an, Qingdao, Jinan, Kunming, Guiyang, Changchun, Taiyuan, Haikou, Xining, Yinchuan, Hohhot, Lhasa and other cities have climbed up the ranking.