news

In recent days, various places have successively announced the first half of the yearGDP data. Although 18 provinces, cities and districts have exceeded or matched the national line of 5% in terms of actual growth rate, the actual growth rate of most provinces is higher than their nominal growth rate due to factors such as deflationary pressure.There are only nine provinces, cities and districts where the nominal figure is not lower than the actual figure and both figures are above 5%, namely Shandong, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Xinjiang, Gansu and Tibet.

Compared with the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee's proposal to "unswervingly achieve the annual economic and social development goals", we can only say that comrades still need to work hard.

Of course, as I have expressed in previous articles, short-term economic fluctuations and growth ups and downs are of little significance for regional observations. We should pay more attention to long-term trend changes.

The reason for writing this article is that some of the changes in indicators in the first half of the year's data just happen to reflect certain trends.

What are the trends here specifically?

Apart from the well-known fact that the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta are getting stronger and stronger, and their lead is getting bigger and bigger, are there any other unexpected or emerging trends?

This year, the Central China Rise Strategy was proposed.20th anniversary.Together with the Western Development Program implemented in 1999 and the Northeast Revitalization Program launched in 2002, it has brought about a major transformation in China's regional development in the first 20 years of this century.

Prior to this, according to the "two major situations" thought put forward by the top leaders at the beginning of reform and opening up, China implemented an unbalanced development strategy with the coastal areas rising first. With the help of the opening-up policy and by attracting foreign investment, a large number of economically strong cities emerged in the eastern region.

In 1978,GDPAmong the top ten cities, half of them were from the central, western and northeastern regions (Chongqing, Shenyang, Dalian, Wuhan and Harbin). But by 1999, at the end of the century, with the rise of coastal cities such as Shenzhen, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Wuxi, only Chongqing and Wuhan remained in the inland regions.

In order to narrow the regional development gap, the country launched three major regional balanced development strategies at the turn of the century.However, due to growth inertia, the GDP gap between coastal and inland areas continued to widen in the following years, reaching its peak around 2005.

That year, the 10 eastern coastal provinces and cities (excluding Liaoning and Guangxi) accounted for 59.54% of the national GDP.

Since then, with the large-scale infrastructure investment wave brought about by urbanization in the central and western regions, and the transfer of manufacturing industries such as automobiles and electronics from the coast to the inland, the strategies of western development and the rise of central China have begun to take effect. The economic growth rate of inland provinces has been faster than that of coastal provinces for more than ten consecutive years, and a number of dark horse cities such as Hefei and Changsha have emerged, with their rankings rising by dozens of places.

Data shows that in the 14 years from 2005 to 2019, the GDP of the three major economic zones in the east, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai and Guangdong, increased by 4.049 times, 4.85 times and 4.77 times respectively. In the central part of China, Henan and the two lakes increased by 5.125 times and 6.49 times respectively. Sichuan, Chongqing and Yunnan-Guizhou in the west increased even more, by 6.47 times and 7.315 times respectively.Among them, Guizhou's GDP growth rate has ranked among the top in the country for 10 consecutive years.

However, after the mask, the population entered negative growth, the urbanization rate slowed down, causing the real estate engine to stall, land finance became unsustainable, and local government debt increased. In addition, changes in the international situation triggered the transfer of the industrial chain. This trend reversed, and the GDP share of the eastern coastal provinces began to bottom out and rebounded, from 51.58% in 2019 to 51.72% in 2023, and further increased to 51.88% in the first half of this year.

In contrast, the share of other regions has fallen. Needless to say, the Northeast. In the first half of the year, Dalian, the largest city in the Northeast, was overtaken by Wenzhou in terms of GDP and was approached by Xuzhou, facing the risk of falling out of the top 30.The central region, which has risen for 20 years, is also beginning to show signs of collapse.

Not only are none of the nine "excellent" provinces, cities and districts mentioned at the beginning of the article located in the central region, the GDP of Henan and Shanxi are even lower than the same period last year, and their nominal GDP has shown negative growth, making them the only two provinces in the country with negative growth.

Behind this are not only the natural factors of the cyclical rise and fall of regional competition, but also the change in thinking among senior management.

If we say that China implemented an unbalanced development strategy in the first 20 years of reform and opening up, then in the second 20 years, it pursued the concept of balanced development of large, medium and small cities, and the east, middle and west. The central government took good care of the central and western regions in terms of land and taxation.

However, in the past two years, due to changes in the internal and external economic environment, the Chinese government has begun to pay attention to the role of major economic provinces again. It has held many meetings to emphasize that major economic provinces should "take the lead". For this reason, relevant policies have also begun to tilt towards major economic provinces.

For example, the just-released communique of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee contains many relevant statements, such as "optimizing land management, improving the land management system that is efficiently connected with macroeconomic policies and regional development... so that advantageous regions have greater room for development."

In other words, the more developed the economy is, the more land quotas it will receive, which will undoubtedly benefit the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and other coastal provinces where population and resources continue to flow in. Under the influence of the Matthew effect, the eastern region may widen the gap with the central and western regions in the future.

However, there are also some inland provinces that have performed well.In fact, the top three provinces in nominal growth in the first half of the year were all western provinces.TibetWith an ultra-high growth rate of 11.2%, Xinjiang ranked first, followed by Gansu, which ranked third, and Inner Mongolia, which ranked fourth, both exceeded 6%, at 6.9% and 6.5% respectively.

Among them, except Gansu, which is not on the border, the achievements of other provinces all benefited from the rapid growth of border trade exports.

In recent years, due to major changes in the international situation, especially the constant frictions with major trading partners such as the United States and Europe, many people are worried that China's economic development will shift from an external cycle to an internal cycle.However, judging from the data, exports are still the best performing of the "three engines" driving economic development.

In the first half of the year, the total export volume of the country increased by 6.9%, which was higher than the GDP growth rate, and much higher than the investment (3.9%) and consumption (3.7%) growth rates. The only change was the change in the main trading partners.

In the past, the United States has always been China's largest trading partner, and the European Union has been China's largest trading partner region.However, in 2019, ASEAN surpassed the United States, and in 2020 it replaced the European Union to become China's largest trading partner. In the first half of this year, China's trade with ASEAN continued to maintain a high growth rate of more than 10%, while trade with the United States and Europe only increased by 2.9% and -0.7% respectively.

In addition, since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, China's trade with Russia, Central Asia and other countries has also grown rapidly, which is beneficial to the relevant border provinces.

For example, Guangxi, benefiting from its proximity to ASEAN, especially Vietnam, saw its exports grow by 28.5% in the first half of the year to RMB 191.8 billion, surpassing Liaoning, Tianjin, Hunan and other provinces, and rising from 17th last year to 13th in the country.

Among them, intermediate products exported to Vietnam amounted to 63.67 billion yuan, an increase of 50.3%.Vietnam has been Guangxi's largest trading partner for 25 consecutive years, and trade with Vietnam accounts for 77% of Guangxi's trade with ASEAN and 42% of its total foreign trade.

With the construction of the Pinglu Canal underway, Guangxi, as the gateway province of the Western Land-Sea New Corridor, is expected to gain new development opportunities in the future with its geographical advantages of being backed by the Great West and facing Southeast Asia. Together with Hainan, which is making every effort to build a free trade port and will start the closed-border operation next year, it will build a new economic growth pole around the Beibu Gulf.

In addition to Southeast Asia to the south, Xinjiang's home advantage is becoming more and more prominent in connecting to Central Asia to the west. In the first half of this year, Xinjiang's total exports amounted to 188.97 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 51.4%. Among them, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan ranked first and second among Xinjiang's trading partners, with increases of 45.8% and 8.7% respectively. The trade volume with the five Central Asian countries and the countries jointly building the "Belt and Road" increased by 23.9% and 43.6% respectively.

With the signing of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project in June this year, both southern and northern Xinjiang will have international railways leading to Central Asia in the future, which will inevitably further enhance Xinjiang's status as a bridgehead for China's opening up to the west and drive the development and opening up of the entire Xinjiang region.

But the most "explosive" one has to be Tibet.Although located on a plateau, Tibet has been developing along the border and opening up to the outside world frequently in recent years. In November last year, the China-Nepal Lizi-Naiqiong Port was opened. So far, Tibet has four land ports, namely Zhangmu, Jilong, Purang and Lizi, as well as three mountain passes, namely Libulek, Shibuchi and Nathu La, for border trade and pilgrims' worship.

In the first half of this year, Tibet's exports increased by 122.9% year-on-year, and its foreign trade growth rate remained the highest in the country for six consecutive months.

Of course, the development of western border provinces cannot replace the economic ballast role of the eastern coastal provinces, but it can indeed expand China's room for maneuver in industrial security.For example, Xinjiang first became popular last year with its aquatic products such as hairy crabs and salmon, and later attracted attention for ranking first in the country in terms of total grain output increase and increase in sown area.Although its economic output ranking is still not high, its importance as a strategic backup area is becoming increasingly prominent.

In the first decade of the 21st century, China's economy was booming, and development flourished in all regions.During that period, GDP, as an important economic indicator, had a high comparative value for observation.However, as China's economy shifts from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage, it no longer has much significance.

Firstly, the rankings of provinces and cities are gradually solidified. For example, Hefei has risen by dozens of places in the past 20 years, or Heilongjiang has dropped by more than 10 places.

Secondly, affected by the Matthew effect, the gap between the east and the central and western regions, especially the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and other inland regions will only widen.

In this case, I suggest that we follow Zhejiang's example and cancel the GDP assessment of 26 underdeveloped counties, and relax the GDP assessment for 16 inland and northeastern provinces and regions except for the 10 eastern coastal provinces and cities and several economically developed provinces such as Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, and Henan.

Instead, we should focus on other data that can better reflect the quality of the economy and people's well-being, such as per capita income, per capita energy consumption, urban-rural income gap, etc. Another important indicator is the local fiscal self-sufficiency rate.

In the first half of this year, Shanghai was the only city in the country to achieve fiscal self-sufficiency. The rest of the provinces, including Zhejiang and Jiangsu, which had performed relatively well in the past, also experienced a situation where fiscal revenues were insufficient to cover expenditures.

In fact, it is precisely because of the pressure of GDP competition and the mentality that the central government will provide a financial guarantee that various regions have borrowed money to build a lot of ineffective infrastructure and launched many useless projects, resulting in increasing local debt.

In the future, in addition to implementing the various reform measures proposed in the communiqué of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, such as "improving the degree of matching between municipal and county financial resources and human rights" and "merging local surcharges and authorizing local governments to determine specific applicable tax rates within a certain range" to enhance local financial resources, fiscal discipline should also be enforced. For example, local governments should be assessed using the existing fiscal self-sufficiency rate as a baseline, with extra points given to those with an increased self-sufficiency rate and deducted for a decreased rate. If a rate decreases year after year during a term of office, the government will veto it.

In short, with the development of China's economy today, we can and should let go of our obsession with high GDP growth. It is time to shift more energy, financial resources and attention to people's livelihood and social undertakings. After all, the competition between regional cities is not only a contest of economic hard power, but also a competition of soft power.

In this regard, in the past one or two years, a number of Internet celebrity cities represented by Zibo in Shandong, Rongjiang in Guizhou, and Altay in Xinjiang have conducted initial exploration attempts, allowing people to see the diversity of Chinese cities that are very different from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Prior to this, Sanming in Fujian and Shenmu in Shaanxi had promoted medical reform, and Wuqi in Shaanxi and Mawei in Fujian had implemented 12 years of free education, which had also sparked heated discussions and received a lot of praise.

But it is still far from the dazzling city charm that Paris displayed in this Olympics, which combines history, humanities, art, architecture and fashion.

This should be the direction of future Chinese urban competition.

After all, when ordinary people discuss cities, they often focus on its food, culture, education, medical care, transportation and housing. Few people would first ask: What is the GDP of this place? Where does it rank in the country?

/// END /// 

No.5901 Original first article | Author Tugenev

About the author: Urban observer in the Yangtze River Delta region, initiator of the "Writing History for Father" project, and manager of the public account "Santu City Notes".

Welcome pointWatch [Qin Shuo’s WeChat Moments video account]