![\"\"](\"https:\/\/chinaobserver.pk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2-1-16-1024x576.jpg\")
Notably, Dalian in Liaoning province and Wenzhou in Zhejiang province became new members of the “trillion-yuan GDP club.”<\/p>\n
What development drivers lie behind these cities?<\/p>\n
From a regional perspective, roughly\u00a01\/3\u00a0of the cities with GDP exceeding 1 trillion yuan are concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta region; four are located in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area; three are in the Beijing\u2013Tianjin\u2013Hebei region; and two belong to the Chengdu\u2013Chongqing economic circle. The growing importance of coordinated regional development is increasingly evident.<\/p>\n
“The 2025 ‘trillion-yuan GDP club’ includes municipalities, provincial capitals, cities\u00a0under separate state planning, and prefecture-level cities. The landscape is no longer dominated by provincial capitals alone, reflecting the diversified development of China’s urban economy,” said Pan Helin, a member of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s Expert Committee for Information and Communication Economy.<\/p>\n China’s “trillion-yuan GDP club” is\u00a0no longer the exclusive domain of traditional first-tier or central cities. Instead, growth is being driven by city clusters, expanding in a ripple effect from cores to wider regions. This pattern of coordinated regional development underscores the robust vitality and immense potential of\u00a0China’s urban economy.<\/p>\n Analyzing a city’s economic progress requires examining both quantitative expansion and qualitative enhancement. In 2025, Beijing’s GDP exceeded 5 trillion yuan for the first time, making it the second Chinese city\u00a0after Shanghai\u00a0to surpass this threshold.<\/p>\n As a mega-city, Beijing has in recent years adhered to a “reduction-oriented development”\u00a0approach — cutting back\u00a0where needed while upgrading\u00a0its economic structure. Over the past five years, the city has relocated or upgraded more than 594 general manufacturing enterprises, demolished 120 million square meters of illegal buildings, and reclaimed\u00a0117 square kilometers of land.<\/p>\n This strategic downsizing has not hindered growth.\u00a0Moving away from traditional expansion models,\u00a0Beijing’s current economic growth is increasingly driven by emerging technologies and high value-added industries. The information services sector, the financial sector, and industry together contributed more than 80%\u00a0to the city’s economic growth.<\/p>\n Integration between technological innovation and industrial innovation is also accelerating: R&D spending among large and medium-sized key enterprises rose by 7.1% in 2025, with both industrial enterprises and technology service firms increasing their R&D investment by more than 10%.<\/p>\n Optimizing structure, driving growth through innovation, strengthening industries, and attracting talent–similar development experience can also be observed in Nanshan district of Shenzhen, Guangdong province. In 2025, Nanshan’s GDP surpassed 1 trillion yuan, making it the first county-level administrative region in China to reach the trillion-yuan level.<\/p>\n A review of Nanshan’s economic performance highlights innovation as its defining feature. Data show that the district holds more than 860 invention patents per 10,000 people, about 22.9 times the national average. Well-known companies such as Tencent, Huawei, and DJI all\u00a0got their start here.<\/p>\n Commenting on the district’s industrial development, Guo Wanda, executive vice president of the Shenzhen-based China Development Institute, said the city’s\u00a0competitiveness lies in the integration of manufacturing and services, the integration of technological and industrial innovation, and the coordinated development of talent, capital, innovation, and industrial chains. Such integration has already expanded across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, helping drive coordinated regional development.<\/p>\n Dalian, a newcomer in the 2025\u00a0“trillion-yuan GDP club” and seen\u00a0as a traditional “old industrial base,” once\u00a0faced challenges from limited growth drivers.<\/p>\n Dalian became\u00a0the first city in northeast China to hit the\u00a01-trillion-yuan mark by strengthening its industrial base. In 2025, value\u00a0added\u00a0in the city’s secondary industry grew by 7.7%, while\u00a0output from\u00a0industrial enterprises above designated size rose 11.7%\u00a0year on year, driven largely by\u00a0the equipment manufacturing sector.<\/p>\n “Building on\u00a0its solid industrial base, Dalian has strengthened high-tech manufacturing and expanded opening\u00a0up by leveraging on its port advantages. As a result, the city\u00a0has\u00a0not only\u00a0expanded its economic scale\u00a0but also made progress in industrial upgrading, improving the business environment, and developing itself into\u00a0an open gateway hub,” Pan said.<\/p>\n A\u00a0closer\u00a0look at China’s\u00a0“trillion-yuan\u00a0GDP club” cities reveals their\u00a0industrial strengths: Quanzhou in textile and apparel, Nantong in construction and shipbuilding, Fuzhou in electronics and information technology, and Hefei in sci-tech innovation.<\/p>\n As Pan pointed\u00a0out, by concentrating on these competitive sectors, these cities are driving high-quality growth. They increase R&D investment, optimize the business environment, and facilitate the efficient flow and aggregation of resources\u00a0— strategies that collectively enhance both the scale and quality of their economic development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Liao Ruiling Recent reports on China’s 2025 economic performance reveal significant milestones.\u00a0As China’s total economic output surpassed the 140-trillion-yuan\u00a0($20.18 trillion) mark, many Chinese cities also achieved fresh breakthroughs in economic scale. Data released by local authorities shows that 29 Chinese cities recorded a\u00a0GDP exceeding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/chinaobserver.pk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3-19-1024x762.jpg\")
Photo shows Xinghai Bay Cross-Sea Bridge in Dalian, northeast China’s Liaoning province. (Photo\/Guo Xingcheng)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n