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After a brief downturn last year, the “strongest prefecture-level city” is back again.

In the first half of this year, Suzhou achieved a regional GDP of 1,205.94 billion yuan, leading the way with a growth rate of 6.2%.GDPIt ranks among the top ten cities, 1.2 percentage points higher than the national average. Prior to that, Suzhou achieved a growth rate of 7.9% in the first quarter, ranking first among the top ten cities.

Judging from the detailed data, apart from the low base effect of the same period last year, Suzhou has made strong moves in its areas of industry (including industrial investment) and foreign trade, while making up for the relatively weak consumption link, and all the "three horses" are running.

In January this year, Suzhou proposed a goal of pushing its GDP to a new level of 3 trillion yuan in about three years. Now that Suzhou has pressed the fast-forward button, how should it proceed in the future?

As a strong industrial city, Suzhou performed well in its advantageous projects in the first half of the year.

"There is a causal relationship between Suzhou's sluggish performance last year and its impressive growth in the first half of this year." Zeng Gang, dean of the Institute of Urban Development at East China Normal University, said that since 2022, Suzhou has seen the relocation of general manufacturing and processing industries, which inevitably led to its poor economic performance for a period of time, but this kind of maneuvering and clearance also "made" room for the development of high-end industries.

A set of data can prove this. In the first half of this year, Suzhou's high-tech industries made concentrated efforts, and the output value of electronic information and automobile manufacturing industries achieved double-digit growth, contributing 73.0% to the growth of the total industrial output value above the designated size. The output of high-tech products such as sensors, medical instruments and equipment, optoelectronic devices and integrated circuits increased by 75.5%, 27.2%, 23.9% and 22.6% year-on-year respectively.

At the same time, industrial investment achieved double-digit growth (12.9%), driving the growth of fixed asset investment by 3.7 percentage points, providing protection for "stable investment" (fixed investment increased by 5.0% year-on-year).

It is worth mentioning that despite the lack of domestic demand, Suzhou's loan growth rate exceeded its deposit growth rate, which Zeng Gang believes is "comparable". "Especially the high investment growth rate, which shows that Suzhou has done a good job in providing financial support for the real economy."

According to the manufacturing development goals set at the beginning of this year, Suzhou hopes to form four trillion-level leading industries in electronic information, high-end equipment, advanced materials, and new energy in about three years. At present, only the new energy industry has not yet reached a trillion-level scale, and the outside world believes that this will be the focus of Suzhou's next step.

However, Zeng Gang reminded that the new energy industry is vast, and Suzhou, which has always focused on corporate benefits, is not suitable to "squeeze" into the new energy vehicle track. In view of its good performance in high-tech products such as sensors, and a lot of early deployment in sub-sectors such as low-altitude economic sensors, focusing on low-altitude economy may be a better choice.

Industrial upgrading also brings benefits to Suzhou's foreign trade.

In the first half of the year, Suzhou's total import and export volume reached 1,231.69 billion yuan, up 9.2% year-on-year. In terms of trade mode, the import and export volume of high-tech products reached 628.45 billion yuan, up 19.9% ​​year-on-year, accounting for 51.0% of the total import and export volume, up 4.6 percentage points year-on-year.

Zeng Gang said that while other regions were still focusing on exporting traditional manufactured products, Suzhou had quietly achieved the transformation and upgrading of foreign trade commodities. This export growth model driven by high-end industries was more stable and competitive.

In contrast, Yiwu, also a foreign trade indicator, achieved a total import and export volume of 324.77 billion yuan in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 20.8%. However, among the export commodity categories, labor-intensive products and electromechanical products still accounted for the majority, accounting for nearly 80% of Yiwu's total commodity exports.

Judging from its actions, Suzhou, which has made its living on the export-oriented economy, is still actively going overseas, seeking orders and expanding markets through the collaboration between government and enterprises, and trying every means to promote the recovery of foreign trade.

The results are obvious from the data. In the first half of the year, Suzhou's exports to emerging markets such as ASEAN, India, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates increased by 14.9%, 18.6%, 42.9% and 66.0% respectively.

However, Zeng Gang said that this approach has obvious short-term results, but it also faces high risks. He suggested that Suzhou should further increase its links with global innovation resources and form a mutually dependent relationship with overseas markets.

It should be noted that cross-border e-commerce, as a new growth point for foreign trade, is a "shortcoming" of Suzhou. In 2023, Suzhou's cross-border e-commerce import and export volume was only 12.47 billion yuan, accounting for 0.5% of its total import and export volume. Both indicators are far lower than the "trillion-yuan" cities such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Ningbo.foreign tradeCity".

To this end, Suzhou has specifically designated 2024 as the "Year of Cross-border E-commerce Leap Forward" and clearly proposed to build a "strong city of cross-border e-commerce", striving to achieve cross-border e-commerce import and export volume of 150 billion yuan by 2026.

Zeng Gang believes that in the distribution of the Yangtze River Delta foreign trade market, Suzhou is squeezed to a certain extent by Shanghai's scale effect and agglomeration effect. The decentralized effect of e-commerce is an opportunity for it to compete for more "cake". From the perspective of logistics, comprehensive management and manufacturing production capabilities, Suzhou also has advantageous conditions for developing cross-border e-commerce.

However, competition in the cross-border e-commerce arena is fierce, and as a "rising star", Suzhou will inevitably face a "tough battle".

For Suzhou, in addition to stabilizing industry and foreign trade, the consumer market has clearly warmed up, which is a bit of an "unexpected surprise".

In the first half of this year, Suzhou achieved a total social consumption of 500.29 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.4%, ranking first among the trillion-yuan cities. Among them, the retail sales of wholesale and retail industries reached 459.34 billion yuan, an increase of 7.5%; the retail sales of accommodation and catering industries reached 40.95 billion yuan, an increase of 6.3%.

The half-way mark exceeded 500 billion yuan for the first time, creating favorable conditions for Suzhou to become a "trillion-yuan consumption city" this year.

Looking back at 2023, Shenzhen and Chengdu both broke through the trillion-yuan mark, joining Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Chongqing in the list of "trillion-yuan consumption cities." However, Suzhou, which ranks sixth in terms of GDP, was not included, with its total retail sales remaining at 958.29 billion yuan.

To this end, when Suzhou deployed the government's key work tasks this year, it specifically emphasized "stimulating potential consumption", including developing the live broadcast economy, the first store economy, and the food economy, creating a batch of domestic trendy products and more brand night markets, promoting the integration of culture and tourism, and creating a world tourist destination city.

Taking first stores as an example, over the past five years, the compound growth rate of first stores in Suzhou has exceeded 36%, making it the city with the fastest growth in the number of first stores among the nine major first store cities including Chengdu and Shanghai.

According to incomplete statistics from Yingshang.com, 31 new first stores were added in Suzhou's key shopping malls in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 82% year-on-year, and about 4.5 times the same period in 2022. Most of them are mature Internet celebrity stores in other cities.

In July this year, Suzhou once again held the "First Store Economic Development Conference", stating that it would promote the gathering of various high-quality resources to first stores and brands, so that more high-quality brands can be "attracted in", "retained" and "live well".

Suzhou's confidence comes from the "purses" of its residents. In the first half of this year, the per capita disposable income of all Suzhou residents exceeded 40,000 yuan (40,210 yuan), a year-on-year increase of 4.2%. In contrast, Suzhou's per capita disposable income level is 1.94 times the national level and 1.45 times that of Jiangsu Province.

In other words, Suzhou, which has consumption capacity, can focus more on optimizing supply and mobilizing residents' willingness to consume, and consumption "upgrade" is expected to come naturally.

Zeng Gang mentioned in an interview that local officials in Suzhou once told him that Suzhou's consumption formats are too traditional and have limited contribution to the local economy, and that they also need to be "changed". In his view, Suzhou cannot follow the path of low-end expansion and scale expansion, but should focus on its manufacturing advantages, develop productive services, and create a consumer industry with national and even global influence.

He said that in the past, consumption in my country's production sector was mainly provided by developed countries. With the acceleration of independent innovation and quality improvement, the "internal circulation" market of my country's advanced manufacturing industry has gradually been cultivated, and it is even capable of taking a share of the global market. In this case, Suzhou can use its own advantages to seize emerging tracks such as the low-altitude economy, form a linkage between manufacturing and consumption, and fill the market gap.

Text | Liu Xuqiang