The Release and Symposium of the China Urban Competitiveness Report (2013) was Held in Hong Kong
(May 20, 2013, Hong Kong)The Hong Kong News Conference of the “China Urban Competitiveness Report(2013)” was held in Hong Kong on May 20, 2013. The conference was sponsored bythe Better Hong Kong Foundation, and jointly organized by the Research Centerof City and Competitiveness of CASS and the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-PacificStudies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The composition of the reporttook more than six months, and it was led by Dr. Ni Pengfei, head of the Cityand Competitiveness Research Centerin CASS, along with urban competitiveness experts from Mainland China, China’sTaiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. The theme of this year’s report was “The new benchmark: building an ideal city with sustainable competitiveness”.
Facing a differentfuture in 2030 with the adjustment of the world’s political,economic, scientific and technological strengthen the multi-polar and dispersion of power, the conflicts of resources and environment, the world would behaving risks of more instability. At the same time,if China wanted to reach its goal of building an overall well-off society in 2030, it must change the current unsustainable pattern of urbanization and solve problems in all aspects of economy, politics, culture society and environment, to better respond tothe challenges in these areas and achieve sustainable development.
In order to enhance the sustainable competitiveness of thecity, the ideal city with sustainable competitiveness that could lead thefuture development of the Chinese cities was the new goal. In view of the newrequirements, new trends, and new mode of urbanization in the development athome and abroad, the task force of the China Urban Competitiveness set up theindex of the “urban sustainable competitiveness” to conduct theoretical,empirical and case studies of the principle and standard of the ideal city’ssustainable competitiveness, in order to lead the Chinese cities to achievesustainable development and the improvement of the competitiveness. The subjectof the report focused on building the theory system of the sustainable idealcity.
According to the new theoretical framework, competitiveness could bedivided into the current short-term competitiveness and the future long-termcompetitiveness. The report was named the comprehensive economiccompetitiveness and the sustainable competitiveness respectively.The index of the comprehensive economic competitiveness selected the currentperformance indicators that could show the output value, and calculated theindex of comprehensive economic competitiveness in 293 cities in the Chinesemainland, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. The index of sustainablecompetitiveness extracted the eight core indicators from the people-orientedlivable city, entrepreneurial-oriented business favorable city, equitable,inclusive and harmonious city, environmental friendly eco-city, innovative andknowledge-driven city, urban and rural integrated city, information city withconvenient information exchange and multi-cultural and open city, to calculatethe index of sustainable competitiveness in Hong Kong, Macau and 287prefecture- and above level cities in the mainland.
The 2012 top 10 cities in the index ofcomprehensive economic competitiveness were: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai,Taipei, Guangzhou, Beijing, Suzhou, Foshan, Tianjin and Macau. Regions of HongKong, Macao and Taiwan accounted for three seats out of the ten, the southeastcoastal cities of mainland accounted for five, and the Bohai Rim region two. Amongthe Midwestern cities, only Wuhan and Chengdu ranked in the top 20, and thehighest ranking in the northwestern region was Xi’an, ranked 36th. Clearly, theimpact of regional advantages on the city’s comprehensive economiccompetitiveness was very obvious. Judging from the administrative level,Special Administrative Region, municipalities, sub-provincial cities and citieswith independent planning, and capital cities had a significantly higherranking in comprehensive economic competitiveness than other prefecture-levelcities.
The 2012 top 10 cities in the index of sustainablecompetitiveness were: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou, Macau,Hangzhou, Qingdao, Wuxi, and Ji’nan. Similar to the comprehensive economiccompetitiveness, the regions of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan accounted for twoseats in the top 10, the southeast coastal cities in the mainland accounted forfive seats, and the Bohai Rim region accounted for three. Among the Midwesterncities, only Wuhan, Changsha and Chengdu entered into the top 20, and thehighest ranking of the northwestern cities was Xi’an, ranked No. 30.
The 2012 sustainable competitiveness andcomprehensive economic competitiveness of the Chinese cities showed a typicalinverted U-shaped relation, reflecting the fact that in order to enhance thecompetitiveness of the Chinese cities, the key was not the total volume of thecomprehensive economic competitiveness, but how to promote sustainablecompetition ability to improve and enhance their development potential. Thiswas also the inherent requirements and the inexhaustible power for the future economicmode transformation and social development of China.
According to the above eight aspects, the taskForce put forward targeted recommendations, i.e., the four basic measures ofthe implementation of a balanced economic and social development strategy, theestablishment of integrated urban and rural municipal management system, theconstruction of the system that could ensure sustainable urban developmentpolicies, and the building of the long-effective mechanism for improving thesustainable competitiveness.
Hong Kong’s comprehensive economic competitivenessstill remained top 1 in China,but with a slowdown in growth. Its performance in the sub-index was slightlydifferent. Hong Kong’s competitiveness index in comprehensive efficiency was0.69968, ranking 3rd in the country, just behind Taipei and Macau. It had anobvious advantage in the per land GDP, thanked to its dense population andbusiness, and the high degree of intensification, as well as streamliningbusiness regulation, honest government, and the facilities and servicesefficiency. The sub-index of Hong Kong’s comprehensive incrementalcompetitiveness was 0.44534, ranking eighth in the country, behind Taipei,Beijing, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Shenzhen, etc. Its advantages in terms oftaxation, personnel, software and hardware facilities had been graduallyweakening. The high rents due to scarce land volume had hampered thedevelopment of SMEs. Besides, Hong Kong’s over-reliance on the finance and realestate industries also made it lack of stable growth.
Hong Kong continued to lead in the sustainable competitiveness.It only scored low in the sub-index of the “knowledge city”. Hong Kong’s indexin sustainable competitiveness was 0.98029, ranking first in the country. Amongthe eight sub-indices, Hong Kong ranked first in five of them, i.e., the“cultural city”, “global city”, “harmonious city”, bunnies favorable city” and“livable city”; it ranked second in the “ecological city”, and third in the“information city”. Hong Kong’s index in the “knowledge city” was 0.83988,ranked fourth, behind Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The percentage of HongKong’s expenditure in R & D of GDP was much lower than that of Japan,Korea, Singapore, and the Mainland China. It lacked a bold plan to supporttechnological innovation and a strong scientific and technological incentivesystem; it also lacked the technological innovation environment, and thetransforming ability of science and technology. In addition to the bottleneck in theindustrial restructuring to innovative technology, Hong Kong also faced thechallenges of the highly dependent economy on the financial and real estateindustry, the accelerated aging population and the competition from domesticand international cities. The task Force had made recommendations on threeaspects of Hong Kong’s future development. First, the Hong Kong SAR governmentshould change his policy ideas, and develop long-term development plan in termsof land policy, the development of pillar industries, emerging industries, long-termpopulation development and talent development. Second, according to China’s neweconomic situation, Hong Kong should reposition its status and play a uniqueand influential role. With China’s economic restructuring and the government’ssupport of the mainland companies’ “going out”, Hong Kong enterprises shouldstrengthen their cooperation with the mainland enterprises; and byparticipating in the construction of an innovative country and a large PearlRiver Delta economic circle, make the Hong Kong citizen fully understand theimportance of regional cooperation for the prosperity and stability; strengthencivil and official exchanges and cooperation between Hong Kong and the mainlandin the construction of infrastructure to play a unique role. Third, throughparticipating and promoting the “Shenzhen-Hong Kong Innovation Circle”, buildAsia’s intellectual property trading and service center, and construct theoverseas development and creative design center of the Mainland enterprises toimplement the strategies of “going out” and “attracting in”, and thus topromote Hong Kong’s scientific and technological innovation to lead thedevelopment of the knowledge economy.
Ms. Karen Tang, CEO of the Better Hong KongFoundation, concluded, “Hong Kong isalready a developed city, and has showed a good performance in all aspects.However, with the situation of the financial crisis still deepening, the worldeconomy going downward, and the increasing international trade protectionism,China has become the driving force for the development of the Asia-Pacificregion. The domestic cities are undergoing rapid development of urbanization,and Hong Kong should assess the situation and formulate long-term strategiesand short-term response measures to cope with the global changes and seize theopportunities.”
If you have any inquiries, please contact Ms.Jimmie Chow, communication manager of the Foundation. Tel: (852) 28653529 /60306025; Fax: (852) 28613361; E-mail: jimmie_chow@betterhongkong.org; Website:www.betterhongkong.org.
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“Better Hong Kong Foundation” was founded by agroup of influential people from Hong Kong’s business community and the societyin 1995. The Foundation has been committed to maintaining a continuous andclose cooperation relations with foreign community, and actively introducesthem to the latest developments and achievements in Hong Kong, in order to makethe international community have a better understanding on the development ofHong Kong and China.