In China's economic and social development, "provincial capitals" or "provincial capitals" are a very important existence.
Except for a few provinces of "twin star" cities (such as Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong), the provincial capital basically integrates the political center, economic center and cultural center of the province......
However, if you pull the economic data of the mainland in the first quarter of this year, you can find a very surprising data: among the 27 provinces (autonomous regions), the economic growth rate of the provincial capitals (capitals) of 17 provinces is actually lower than the provincial average (for the sake of convenience, the capital of the autonomous region is also called the provincial capital in the following article).
How can these provincial capitals underperform the market and pull their hips so much?
During the May Day holiday, I told everyone that I wanted to write such an article.
Because of the delay in sorting out the data, it was finally sent out today.
Start with the data.
Comparison of the economic growth rate of provincial capitals in the first quarter
Let's start with a brief analysis of the data.
In the first quarter of this year, the nominal growth rate of the national GDP was 3.97%, and the real growth rate was 5.3%.
Overall, 15 of the 27 provincial capitals had nominal GDP growth rates lower than the national average in the first quarter, and of course, two of them (Nanchang, Jiangxi, and Lhasa, Tibet) did not report nominal growth.
Looking at the actual growth rate, 16 of the 27 cities are below the national average.
That is, more than half of the provincial capitals, in the first quarter of this year, the development is not as good as the national average.
Next, compare the provincial capitals with the provincial average.
Similarly, looking at the nominal growth rate, there are 15 provincial capitals that underperform the provincial average.
Looking at the actual growth rate, there are even more provincial capitals that have underperformed, as many as 17!
In other words, the capitals of 17 provinces (accounting for nearly 63%) developed in the first quarter of this year, slower than the provincial average.
Let's take a look at the typical city.
Compared with the national nominal growth rate, the largest gap is in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, which is 9.41 percentage points lower.
Similarly, Taiyuan is 4.3 percentage points lower than the actual growth rate of the whole country, which is also the largest gap.
Looking at the average level of the province, Nanjing is almost meaningless, but the "Thirteen Taibao" in Jiangsu Province has always been chasing me, and they are very hard.
Of course, there are also very hard provincial capitals.
Provincial capitals like these are not only outperforming the national average, but also the provincial average.
But there are also slightly regrettable that there are only 7 such provincial capitals:
Hohhot, Shenyang, Fuzhou, Zhengzhou, Guiyang, Xining, Yinchuan.
Shenyang Shengjing Grand Theater
Why is this happening?
Some people on the Internet say that this is a manifestation of the failure of the provincial capital's "star absorption law" in 2024, the reason is that the provincial capital city cannot absorb it, and even gives an example of Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Fujian, and Anhui's provincial capitals are all growing at a low rate.
But this analysis of the causes is a bit ridiculous, why?
This is because the provincial capitals of the provinces in these examples are not considered strong provincial capitals (generally speaking, strong provincial capitals account for more than 30% of the GDP of the province).
Although some people say that Hefei is "one city dominates" in Anhui, in fact, Hefei accounts for only 24.5% of the province's GDP.
Therefore, the argument that the "provincial capital absorbs stars" has failed is obviously untenable.
On the contrary, according to the experience of foreign urban development, eventually, one or several national super city circles will be formed, and each region will also have its own core cities.
For example, Japan has three major metropolitan areas: the Tokyo metropolitan area (Tokyo metropolitan area, Tokyo metropolitan area), the Osaka metropolitan area (area, Osaka area), and the Nagoya metropolitan area (Nakakyo area, Nagoya area), collectively referred to as "Higashi-Nayama".
In the first quarter of this year, the GDP of provincial capitals accounted for the proportion of the whole province
Back to the point.
In the first quarter, the provincial capital city collectively stalled, why in the end?
Probably straightforward, the reasons are a bit complicated.
Let's start with the opposite.
There are a total of 8 cities with nominal and real growth rates exceeding the provincial average: Hohhot, Shenyang, Harbin, Fuzhou, Zhengzhou, Guiyang, Xining and Yinchuan.
Have you noticed that only one of these 8 cities is a southern city (Fuzhou), and the others are all western or northern cities in the sense of economic geography?
Except for Hohhot, other cities account for 20 or 30 percent of the province's GDP, while Xining and Yinchuan can even account for half of the province's GDP.
That is to say, for these provinces, the provincial capital is actually the most representative city in the province, and the provincial capital is good.
According to this logic, looking at Changchun (GDP in 2023 accounts for 51.7% of Jilin Province's GDP), although the nominal growth rate in the first quarter was 0.88 percentage points lower than that of the province, the actual growth rate was 0.6 percentage points higher than that of the province.
This logic applies to provinces with strong provincial capitals, or provinces with high "primacy" of provincial capitals.
The provincial capital city is the basic plate of the province's economy.
From another point of view, this logic can also be corroborated.
If the provincial capital has a low proportion of the economy, the provincial capital is slower, which often does not affect the whole province.
Industry is the cornerstone of urban development
Let's take it a step further.
The first step is always the first to encounter problems.
It can be said that it is precisely because the provincial capital city is the forerunner of the economy in the entire provincial scope that it will naturally encounter problems first under the current unprecedented changes in internal and external trends.
For example, Xi'an is the leader of Shaanxi and even the entire northwest region.
However, in the first quarter of this year, Xi'an's growth rate was slower than that of the whole country and the whole province.
The main reasons are: first, the industrial growth is not strong enough, Xi'an once became the first city of new energy vehicles in the first two years, but the total output value of the automobile manufacturing industry fell by 3.4% in the first quarter of this year; second, investment in fixed assets declined, with a year-on-year decrease of 2.6% in the first quarter; Third, consumption was not active enough, and the total retail sales of consumer goods increased by only 0.1% in the first quarter.
In fact, there is a similar problem in Guangzhou.
In the first quarter of this year, it was even pulled down by Chongqing, and its ranking in the country slipped from 4th to 5th.
Guangzhou is a thousand-year-old commercial capital and the city with the most complete industrial categories in South China, but Guangzhou's industry has been running at a low level for some time.
In the first quarter of this year, Guangzhou's industrial added value above designated size increased by 0.1%, 6 percentage points lower than that of the whole country; The growth rate of the total import and export value of foreign trade was 3.3 percentage points lower than that of the whole country.
Automobile, electronics and petrochemical have always been the "ballast stone" of Guangzhou's industry, but because of the rise of new energy vehicles, as well as foreign trade situation, industrial transfer and other factors, it is inevitable to be affected.
GAC's production plant
The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote in the first sentence of the opening sentence of his famous book "Anna Karenina":
Happy families are all alike, and unhappy families have their own misfortunes.
This sentence is also very appropriate when applied to the economic data of provincial capitals in the first quarter of this year.
But as the saying goes, I don't care about one time and one place, and I don't fight for a short time.
Although the economic performance of most provincial capitals in the first quarter was sluggish, the big brother is the big brother after all, and it is only a matter of time before the big brother returns.
Moreover, you chase me, everyone strives to go upstream, and only then can there be a head.