On 8th October, the List of Top 100 Counties——Research Report on Scientific Development Assessment of Small and Medium-sized Cities in China of 2018 was released. As usual, Jiangsu, a major economic province, occupies 23 seats of the list, taking up 1/4 seats of all and becoming the “biggest winner”. Moreover, it enjoys 6 seats among top 10 counties, Kunshan ranking first for 14 years continuously.
Kunshan
After the release of the list, official platforms of counties or districts that are on the list published articles to introduce themselves.
As we can see, Jiangsu takes up 23 seats among the top 100 counties of comprehensive strength, who occupies seats most, followed by Shandong and Zhejiang, who has 15 seats and 14 seats respectively.
Regionally, the Yangtze River delta performs best. Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui take up 43 seats of the list. Among them, Kunshan city of Jiangsu province ranks first in Scientific Development Assessment of Small and Medium-sized Cities in China for 14 consecutive years.
In Jiangsu alone, Kunshan, Jiangyin, Zhangjiagang, and Changshu are the top four counties on the list, and Taicang as well as Yixing ranked 7th and 9th respectively, which means that Jiangsu enjoys 6 seats among top 10 counties of the list. During the past two years(2016 and 2017), these 6 counties ranked top 10 as well, which are distributed in Suzhou and Wuxi, two large economically developed areas in southern Jiangsu.
The “comprehensive strength” implies economic development, social progress, urban-rural integration, environmental friendliness and government efficiency. If all counties in Jiangsu are ranked according to GDP, the top 6 will be Kunshan, Jiangyin, Zhangjiagang, Changshu, Yixing and Taicang. The ranking of top 10 of the list is quite similar to this result.
Nevertheless, Taixing, Jingjiang and Xinghua, three counties and cities under the jurisdiction of Taizhou, whose GDP ranking in Jiangsu belong to the second tier in 2017 (ranked 11th, 13th and 16th respectively), all failed to have a seat on this list this year. Dongtai, who has a quite balanced development and enjoys the reputation as “pearl of the Yellow Sea”, couldn’t have a name on neither this list nor the List of Top 100 Counties of Green Development, even though it has no chemical enterprise and its GDP ranks highest in Yancheng and 18th in Jiangsu.
Moreover, compared with the 20 counties on the list in 2016 and 2017, three new faces of Jiangsu show up: Suyang of Changzhou, Shuyang of Suqian and Donghai of Lianyungang. It is also the first time for counties under the jurisdiction of Changzhou, Suqian and Lianyungang to have a seat on this list.
Since now, only Taizhou and Huai’an have no counties on this list among 13 cities in Jiangsu which are entitled with counties. (Nanjing has jurisdiction over 13 districts therefore it is not included)
