Jointly released recently by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Economic Daily, “China Urban Competitiveness Report” ranked China’s cities of 2018 from the perspectives of economic, sustainable, livable and commercial competitiveness. Jiaxing, took the 38^th position in China, just next to Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang in terms of comprehensive economic competitiveness - the most attentive and crucial indicator of all in 2018. In addition, Jiaxing took the 50^th place in sustainable and livable competitiveness respectively last year. 

China’s top 10 cities in comprehensive economic competitiveness in 2018 are Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Taipei and Dongguan. Jiaxing’s achievements result from its adherence to the general work guideline of making progress while maintaining stability, new development ideas and high-quality development.  

In 2018, Jiaxing’s GDP reached 487.198 billion yuan, an increase of 7.6% year on year. It is a tremendous achievement in complicated economic situations at home and abroad last year. Jiaxing’s per capita GDP, the best indicator to measure regional economic development, reached 100,000 yuan calculated according to resident population, higher than national and provincial ones. “This means Jiaxing has been making progress in high-quality economic development, structural upgrading and innovation, laying a solid foundation for the future high-quality development.” said Jiang Mingxiang, a statistician from Jiaxing Statistics Bureau. In the first quarter of 2019, Jiaxing achieved a year-on-year economic growth of 8.1%. It is an impressive start.

“The improvement of Jiaxing’s comprehensive economic competitiveness implies local economic development is vigorous and local advantages in location, innovation and business environment are playing their roles.” said Chen Longjun, vice president and senior economist of Jiaxing Economy Planning Institute. 

What are the sources to enhance urban economic competitiveness? With a close relation with R&D indexes, total patents and innovation-driven development indexes, the urban innovation-driven development has a remarkable impact on urban comprehensive competitiveness, that is to say, stronger innovation ability means stronger economic competitiveness, according to the report mentioned above.

It is true of Jiaxing’s development. As one of the initiators and supporters of the G60 Valley of the Yangtze River Delta, Jiaxing is striving to build a new city strong in vigor and sci-tech innovation competence, and abundant in top-end innovation elements, and local comprehensive economic competitiveness is therefore enhanced. The data show that local output values of new products of the industries above the designated size in 2018 reached 41.3%, ranking the first in Zhejiang, and the values added of hi-tech and strategic emerging industries accounted for 52.4% and 39.7% respectively.

Good business environment is indispensable to the urban competitiveness. Jiaxing’s competitiveness in business environment took the 45^th place in China, and is just next to Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang, which mainly resulted from Jiaxing’s efforts in enhancing business environment. In recent years the whole country has attached importance to the business environment improvement. Jiaxing has endeavored to build “hard environment” (urban construction, transport and industrial platforms) and “soft environment” (government affairs services, financial environment, talents, innovation, security and legal system). Since the beginning of this year, this city has founded Jiaxing Business Environment Office, participated in Zhejiang’s trial assessments of business environment, listed 70 negative items for the best business environment, etc. A good environment has come into being for building Jiaxing into a city with the best business environment.   

In terms of sustainable development competitiveness, Jiaxing ranked 47^th nationwide. The sustainable development competitiveness indexes mainly refer to knowledge index, harmonious index, economically friendly index, cultural index, information index, etc. of a city. Livable environment is an important element for talents attraction. The report mentioned above explained that top three elements to determine urban livable competitiveness are vigorous economic environment, excellent education environment and good medical environment. In addition, secure social environment, comfortable living environment and convenient infrastructure are also important.