New benchmark: constructing the ideal city with sustainable competitiveness

Report theme: establishing a new theory and benchmark of constructing the ideal city with sustainable competitiveness; leading Chinese cities taking the path of new-type urbanization in future and transiting into ideal cities with sustainable competitiveness

The news release of 2013 Annual Report on China’s Urban Competitiveness: Constructing the Ideal City with Sustainable Competitiveness (a big achievement of the National Academy of Economic Strategy, CASS) was co-organized by the National Academy of Economic Strategy (NAES), the Social Sciences Academic Press and the Center for City and Competitiveness (CCC) of CASS on May 19th, 2013 in Beijing. 2013 Blue Book of Urban Competitiveness: Annual Report on China’s Urban Competitiveness (thereinafter as the Report) was led by Dr. Ni Pengfei, Dean Assistant of NAES of CASS, with 6-month input from a group of experts from Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

On the press conference were present Li Yang, Vice President and Commissioner of CASS, Gao Peiyong, President of NASE of CASS and Commissioner of CASS, Hu Pengguang, Deputy Director of Social Sciences Academic Press, and Niu Wenyuan, Consultant of the State Council, TWAS Academician, and CAS Researcher. Shi Dan, Vice President of NASE, hosted the conference, and Ni Pengfei, Dean Assistant of NASE introduced this achievement on behalf of the research group.

All leaders and experts present reviewed the development and changes of Chinese cities since the first issue of Annual Report on Urban Competitiveness, and the arduous research on China’s urbanization competitiveness, acknowledged those reports’ guidance, encouragement and decision references for Chinese city development, and made pertinent advices on improvements of future reports. They made profound discussion on important issues raised in No. 11 report.

According to the lessons learnt from long-term studies and experiments and the index minimization principle, the research group used economic growth and economic intensity for the first time in this report to measure the comprehensive competitiveness (current short-term competitiveness) of cities, and used 68 objective indexes in terms of 8 aspects, namely livability, commerciability, harmony, ecology, knowledge, universe, information and culture to measure the sustainable competitiveness (future long-term competitiveness) of cities. The group also decided a new benchmark of constructing the ideal city with sustainable competitiveness: sustainably and effectively creating material and spiritual wealth at present and in future to leave residents and generations the cities with more welfare abilities, which were human-oriented livable cities, entrepreneurship-advocated commercial cities, fair and inclusive harmonious cities, environment-friendly ecological cities, innovation-driven knowledge cities, urban-rural integrated universe cities, convenient information cities and open multicultural cities. These indexes and benchmark were also the index system and target benchmark of new-type urbanization.

According to the index system mentioned above, the report used all municipal (including their directly-controlled towns) objective data for the first time to make empirical studies on the comprehensive economic competitiveness of 293 cities and the sustainable competitiveness of 287 cities from Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in 2012.

2012 Urban Comprehensive Economic Competitiveness: HK, Macao & Taiwan, Southeast Region and Circum-Bohai Sea Region, took the top 10 most competitive cities, which were: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Taibei, Guangzhou, Beijing, Suzhou, Foshan, Tianjin and Macao. Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan took 3 seats, the southeast coastal region took 5 seats, and the Circum-Bohai Sea region took 2 seats. Wuhan and Chengdu in Midwest China entered into top 20 ranking. Compared from a regional perspective, the urban comprehensive economic competitiveness of HK, Macao & Taiwan, Southeast Region and Circum-Bohai Sea Region was much higher than the national average competitiveness; while that of Northeast Region, Midwest Region, Southwest Region and Northwest Region was much lower than the national average competitiveness. Within the same region, cities in Midwest Region had least gaps in their competitiveness.  

2012 Sustainable Urban Competitiveness: HK, Macao & Taiwan, Southeast Region and Circum-Bohai Sea Region, took the top 10 most competitive cities, which were: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou, Macao, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Wuxi and Jinan. Similar to the comprehensive economic competitiveness ranking, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan took 2 seats, the southeast coastal region took 5 seats, and the Circum-Bohai Sea region took 3 seats. Wuhan, Changsha and Chengdu in Midwest China entered into top 20 ranking. Compared from a regional perspective, the urban comprehensive economic competitiveness of HK, Macao & Taiwan, Southeast Region and Circum-Bohai Sea Region was much higher than the national average competitiveness; while that of Middle Region, Northeast Region, Southwest Region and Northwest Region was much lower than the national average competitiveness. No matter the gap between regional and national average competitiveness, or the gap between cities within the same region, the sustainable urban competitiveness was smaller than the urban comprehensive economic competitiveness.

2012 Livable City Competitiveness: Southeast Region had much higher livable competitiveness while West Region had much lower competitiveness. The top 10 most competitive cities were: Hong Kong, Macao, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhuhai, Suzhou, Weihai, Haikou, Zhengjiang and Zhongshan. Now the human-oriented livable city construction has the following problems: 1) focusing on city construction but ignoring management service; 2) focusing on hard and large infrastructure construction but ignoring soft and small auxiliary infrastructure construction; 3) shortage of city construction investment results in focusing on overground and surface construction but ignoring underground and inside construction; 4) focusing on object transportation and vehicle travelling but ignoring people mobility and its convenience; 5) city construction is too more administrative, small and medium-sized cities have no enough investments, and small cities and towns have incomplete functions; 6) medium and large cities start to burst “urban diseases” at one time.

2012 Commercial City Competitiveness: almost consistent with its economic development. The top 10 most competitive cities were: Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Foshan, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Qingdao and Hangzhou. Now it’s urgent to transit entrepreneurship-advocated cities sustainable for commercial development, but there are problems as followed: 1) focusing on land and tax preferential policies; 2) focusing on hard infrastructure but ignoring soft environment; 3) some local polices are changeable and temporary; 4) enterprises spend too long time in finishing all necessary approval procedures for establishment an operation and have to undertake heavy taxes; 5) there are no complete service systems for micro, small and medium enterprises, nor for residents to start business.

2012 Harmonious City Competitiveness: second-tier, third-tier cities and small and medium-sized cities were more harmonious, “Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou” were not in top 10 ranking. The top 10 most competitive cities were: Hong Kong, Macao, Jinao, Xi’an, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Weihai, Dalian, Xiamen and Ningbo. Now the fair and inclusive harmonious city construction has the following problems: 1) administrative affairs of urban governments are not transparent; 2) some local governments have little credibility and low public service level; 3) governments differ in where the public service expenses are spent; 4) permanent residents and migrants are granted with different achievements made during city development.

2012 Ecological City Competitiveness: Shanxi and Shandong provinces were way much better; the top 10 most competitive cities were: Macao, Hong Kong, Nanchang, Suizhou, Shangrao, Huangshan, Jingdezhen, Yantai, Jiujiang and Guangzhou. Now it’s very challenging to construct an environment-friendly ecological city, as 1) major incidents caused by city environment pollution are explosively soaring; 2) ecological city is just a slogan, nothing practical has been done yet; 3) there are no sufficient environment negative externality and internality economic mechanisms yet; 4) environment supervision is too weak, some local environment protection departments even descend to pollution protection authorities.

2012 Knowledge City Competitiveness: Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces were the best, accounting for 36% of top 50 ranking. The top 10 most competitive cities were: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan and Dalian. Now to construct an innovation-driven knowledge city, it’s still a long way to go, as 1) technical innovation driving factors for economic development are few; 2) innovation factor input proportion is low; 3) technical achievement conversion rate is low; 4) small and medium-sized cities are far away from the ideal knowledge cities.

2012 Universe City Competitiveness: the gradient differences between Eastern China, Central China and Western China were sharp; the top 10 most competitive cities were: Hong Kong, Macao, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Dongguan, Beijing, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Zhuhai and Wuxi.Now the urban-rural integrated universe city construction is heavily lagged behind, as 1) the urban-rural income gap is large; 2) rural public services are much behind urban public services; 3) rural infrastructure is far behind urban infrastructure in terms of quantity, quality, variety and property; 4) the population urbanization is far behind non-agriculture development, even furtherer behind land urbanization.

2012 Information City Competitiveness: direct-controlled municipalities and province capitals were much better. The top 10 most competitive cities were: Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Nanjing, Chongqing and Qingdao. Now convenient information city development is just on its early stage, it still has the following problems: 1) overall infrastructure for information cities is not enough; 2) the development between regions or between cities inside the same region is not consistent; 3) latest information communication technologies are not fully applied; 4) information resource utilization rate is low.

2012 Cultural City Competitiveness: Southeast Region and Circum-Bohai Sea Region took the top 10 seats but Hong Kong topped the ranking. The top 10 most competitive cities were: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Tianjin, Nanjing and Foshan. Now it’s urgent to construct open multicultural cities, as 1) the current city construction is all the same and has no personal features; 2) modern culture construction is far behind the economic development, what’s the worse, the historical culture is badly damaged; 3) it needs to upgrade openness, diversification and inclusivity of urban culture.

The report discovers that 1) the indexes of comprehensive economic competitiveness of 287 sample cities in 2012 indicate a typical “∽” law, predicted earlier by Fujitaetal (1996). The closer to ports, the higher the city comprehensive economic competitiveness is. When its distance to port is increasing, the city comprehensive economic competitiveness decreases at first and rises again till reaches the second peak. This trend is very similar to the conclusion of new economic geography. 2) The indexes of comprehensive economic competitiveness of 287 sample cities in 2012 indicate different space variation laws. The closer to ports, the higher the city comprehensive economic competitiveness is. When its distance to port is increasing, the city comprehensive economic competitiveness decreases at first and rises again. This phenomenon is summarized as a positive “U” law between urban sustainable competitiveness and its sea distance. 3) The comprehensive economic competitiveness of Chinese cities is quite different between regions or between cities in the same region. When average value is 0.0878, the variable coefficient is up to 1.131. The gap of urban-rural integration development is the largest; while the gap of human-oriented livable city development is the smallest. 4) All sub-item competitiveness of Chinese cities is far behind that of ideal cities. The national average value of sustainable competitiveness is 0.4; the highest value of eight indexes is the human-oriented livable city index, which is 0.4141, but other indexes are below 0.4.

This report selects 18 cities from the world as benchmarks for nine aspects. They are: Singapore, the international benchmark, and Hong Kong, the domestic benchmark for the sustainably competitive city; Vancouver, the international benchmark, and Zhongshan, the domestic benchmark for the human-oriented livable city; Denver, the international benchmark, and Guangzhou, the domestic benchmark for the entrepreneurship-advocated commercial city; Geneva, the international benchmark, and Macao, the domestic benchmark for the fair and inclusive harmonious city; Copenhagen, the international benchmark, and Nanchang, the domestic benchmark for the environment-friendly ecological city; Boston, the international benchmark, and Beijing, the domestic benchmark for the innovation-driven knowledge city; Bavaria, the international benchmark, and Suzhou, the domestic benchmark for the urban-rural integrated universe city; New York, the international benchmark, and Shanghai, the domestic benchmark for the convenient information city; Chicago, the international benchmark, and Nanjing, the domestic benchmark for the open multicultural city.

The report believes new-type urbanization path is indispensable for constructing the ideal city with sustainable competitiveness. Selecting the path of “prevention and treatment integration” will make living environment better and better; selecting the path of “quality first” will make competitive environment for business; selecting the path of “green development” will make ecological environment more beautiful; selecting the path of “inclusivity” will make citizens more fair and justice; selecting the path of “innovation-driven” will make the city leading the future; selecting the path of “blending and equalization” will make cities feeding the rural in return; selecting the path of “catching up technologies” will ensure cities free communication; selecting the path of “diversifying from one source” will make cities individual and unique.

The report suggests some countermeasures should be taken nationwide to construct the ideal city with sustainable competitiveness. These countermeasures are: 1) implementing balanced development strategies for the economic society to achieve balanced development of urbanization and industrialization, service industry and manufacture industry, urban and rural, urban economy, society and ecology; 2) establishing urban-rural integration municipal administrative system, consummating urban-rural administrative functions, establishing urban-rural integration but urban-dominant city management system, updating public management philosophy, promoting government management more human, efficient, institutionalized, competitive and even clearer in awards and punishment, bringing up NGO, enhancing city community construction, and intensifying city emergency response system; 3) outlining systems and strategies for the sustainable development of cities, deepening reforms on finance and taxation system, land system, household registration system, employment system, and investment and financing system, and consummating social security system; 4) establishing long-term effective systems to improve city sustainable competitiveness, and consummating price regulation system, ecological compensation system, land occupancy system, fiscal subsidiary system and taxation regulation system.

In last decade, Annual Report on China’s Urban Competitiveness provided positive guidance, encouragement and decision-making references for development and urbanization for Chinese cities. In view of new trends and propositions of the development both at home and abroad, China has to take the new-type urbanization path in next 10 years to construct ideal cities with sustainable competitiveness.

The Blue Book, published by Social Sciences Academic Press, is the 11th annual report completed by the research group of China’s urban competitiveness. It uses index system and objective data to assess competitiveness of almost 300 Chinese cities and how far they have made to become ideal cities. It measures China’s urban competitiveness development pattern from a general perspective, and studies some disparities between the actual and the ideal. It also measures how the goals of new-type urbanization have been achieved and how correct the selected paths are. This report has great significance on decision-making and studies for municipal government departments, domestic and foreign enterprises, relevant research institutions and the social public.