Center for City and Competitiveness

Center for City and Competitiveness of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) was foundedon April 26, 2010. It is a non-entity academic center at department level,which focuses on city and competiveness researches. Ni Pengfei ，assistant to theDirector of CASS National Academy of Economic Strategy serves as Director of thiscenter, which is mainly composed of researchers from City and Real-estate EconomyResearch Lab and City Competitiveness Project Group at CASS. This center also invitesexperts and scholars at home and abroad to participate in their studies invarious forms.

Inrecent years, this center, as a research group, has made a lot of innovative explorationson cities and competitiveness. Their research on Chinese cities’ competitivenesswon "Sun Yefang Economic Science Award” and their research on China’shousing development received Major National Social Science Foundation’s support.This research group has successively published dozens of theses on authoritativejournals at home and abroad as Economic Research,Chinese Academyof Social Sciences, Journal of International Affairs (US), Urban Study (UK), and etc. They have successivelyundertook projects assigned by the Central Government, Major National Social ScienceFoundation Bidding Project and projects of the United Nations, the World Bank,the European Union, Central Organization Department, Ministry of Science and Technology,Ministry of Commerce, Beijing Municipality, Guangzhou Municipality, ChengduMunicipality and other international organizations, National Ministries andlocal governments. So far, they have published eleven “China UrbanCompetitiveness Report" (annual report), three “Global UrbanCompetitiveness Report” (biannual report), three “China’sHousing Development Report” (annual report) and one “China’s National Competitiveness Report”(biannual report). The researchers have done case, strategy and countermeasurestudies for nearly 20 provincial and municipal governments and published twelvecase study monographs. Among these monographs, “Annual Report on UrbanCompetitiveness” has become an important academic brand of CASS, which has verybroad impacts at home and abroad. “Annual Report on Urban Competitiveness” has furtherestablished national leading position of CASS in these fields above, which has alsoprovided references for central and local governments’ relevant decision-makings.The research group has also organized and united with urban competitivenessresearch experts worldwide to set up Global Urban Competitiveness Project(GUCP), and cooperated with scholars from the World Bank Group and world famouscities in related areas. They have also held International Forum on Urban Competitivenessto expand discourse power and influence of CASS in these international academicfields.

Thiscenter's main tasks include: organizing relevant researchers from all sectors athome and abroad to carry out academic researches related with Urban Economy, UrbanManagement, Urbanization, Urban Competitiveness, Real-estate Economy, and Real-estateFinance, as well as publishing research theses, monographs and reports relatedwith urban and real-estate; conducting academic exchanges at home and abroadand organizing scholars in this center to make international academic visits; organizingworldwide experts in related fields, city mayors and experts from all sectorsto convene international forums on urban competitiveness and academic meetings related;cooperating with relevant units to conduct cooperative researches, socialpractices, special surveys and other activities; accepting assignments ofgovernments, enterprises, non-governmental organizations throughout the world toresearch on policy and strategy consultations; accepting postgraduates’ internshipapplications and scholars’ academic visits, as well as holding various forms oftrainings as Senior Training Class, thus to cultivate academic and urbanmanagement talents who can apply their knowledge into practice.