Hi 🙂

Today’s post is about which Chinese cities are the driving force behind China's huge and growing economy. 

Guys who are serious about sourcing from China pretty much all know that China's economy is now the second largest in the world.   Do you know about the next bunch of cities with billion dollar economies? 

Are you ready? Let’s do it!

Who are We, Who is China Verification??

China Verification is a service for finding and verifying China suppliers. We have verified hundreds of China companies.

At China Verification we are both serious and passionate about helping our clients. That is why we prepared this post to help hardworking entrepreneurs - just like you? - to learn more about China's biggest urban economies.  

We are going to show you: 

• Where does the data come from?
• What are 100 Largest China City Economies?
• What Provinces have the most - and the least - big urban economies?

Where does the China City Economies Data Come From?

The Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道) published a report sharing data compiled by their "21 Data News Laboratory" (21数据新闻实验室) which listed the 100 Mainland China cities with the strongest economies. 

That report was widely reproduced throughout China. The data in this post is based on the original report by 21st Century Business Herald and refers only to cities in Mainland China. That means we do not include Hong Kong, Macau & any cities in Taiwan.

As China's best-known cities, it came as no surprise that this data identified Shanghai and Beijing as the cities with the largest GDP.  But, have you heard of

• Chengdu in Sichuan
• Wuhan in Hubei;
• Hangzhou in Zhejiang; or
• Nanjing and Suzhou in Jiangsu??
• 
  

We got you covered. Let's go deep.

List of 100 Largest China City Economies

Here is a list of the 100 China city economies with the largest GDP based on self-reported data from the first half of 2019.

Keep in mind that due to the way China is administered, the GDP data for each city includes the contribution of counties and towns that fall under their jurisdiction, not just their own districts. The results skew quite a lot for some cities with a large administrative areas, such as Chongqing.

*GDP data for 2019 Q1-Q2 was unavailable for Changchun, Shenyang, Urumqi, Baotou, Daqing, Liuzhou and Langfang at the time the article was produced. Rankings for these cities are based on data from 2018 Q3-Q4, but unfortunately the actual GDP figure wasn't provided.

Chinese Provinces with the Most Top 100 Cities

One thing this data shows is the disparity of wealth between China's different provinces.

The large, prosperous coastal provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu and Guangdong lead the way with the most number of top 100 cities.

Meanwhile, there are 4 Mainland China provinces without any city in the top 100, i.e. Qinghai, Tibet, Hainan and Ningxia.