In the group of western cities, can Chengdu, a leader, surpass its current development trajectory and leap to become a pioneer? Meanwhile, Suzhou, which holds the title of the “strongest prefecture-level city,” can it continue to maintain its leading position and keep this advantage throughout the year?
The first quarter economic data for both cities in 2024 has been released, with the national city rankings currently listing Suzhou at the top, ranked sixth. According to data provided by Chengdu’s Bureau of Statistics, Chengdu’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first quarter of 2024 reached 551.82 billion yuan. In the same period, Suzhou’s GDP reached 554.9 billion yuan. Looking at these figures, Suzhou’s economy exceeds Chengdu’s by 30.8 billion yuan, meaning that once again, Chengdu falls behind Suzhou, temporarily losing the title of the sixth-largest city in the country.
It is worth noting that Chengdu has set an economic growth target of about 6% for 2024, but the growth rate in the first quarter was slightly below this target, with a gap of 1 percentage point. By contrast, Suzhou’s economy grew by 7.9% in the first quarter, surpassing the target set at the beginning of the year by 2.9 percentage points.
Currently, both Chengdu and Suzhou are accelerating the pace of attracting business investments and intellectual resources and are actively positioning themselves in emerging productive forces, such as the “low altitude economy.” Historically, Chengdu has mostly maintained a lead over Suzhou. Previously, Chengdu’s economic growth rate was sustained around 8%, leading among the country’s large and medium-sized cities, while Suzhou’s rate fluctuated between 6%-8%. In the first quarter of 2023, Chengdu maintained a growth rate of 5.3%, outpacing Suzhou by 3.4 percentage points. It is by maintaining this long-term lead in economic growth rate that Chengdu eventually surpassed Suzhou with an advantage of 8.02 billion yuan.
However, under the current circumstances, Chengdu’s economic growth rate is at a historic low point, while Suzhou is gradually getting on the right track. Suzhou demonstrates its lead over Chengdu in the growth of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. Especially in the foreign trade sector, Suzhou achieved a total import and export volume of 593.48 billion yuan in the first quarter, a growth rate of 9.6%, with the export volume being 363.58 billion yuan, up by 8.7%, and the import volume reaching 229.9 billion yuan, up by 11.2%. The driving force of private enterprises is even more significant; in the first quarter, Suzhou’s private enterprise imports and exports totaled 233 billion yuan, a growth of 19.8%, contributing 7.1 percentage points to the city’s total import and export growth and increasing its share by 3.3 percentage points compared to the same period last year, reaching 39.3%.
Although the growth in total foreign trade imports and exports for Chengdu is significant, its growth mainly relies on imports rather than exports. Recent data reveals that Chengdu achieved a total foreign trade import and export volume of 185.91 billion yuan in the first quarter, with a year-over-year growth rate of 6.9%. Breaking down the data shows that the export volume was 106.03 billion yuan, unexpectedly showing a 7.3% decline, while the import volume was 79.88 billion yuan, displaying a strong growth trend with a notable rate of 34.3%.
Chengdu’s fixed-asset investment growth rate has surpassed that of Suzhou, indicating a leading advantage achieved amid the ongoing optimization of its investment structure. Specifically, in the last quarter, Chengdu realized a 6.8% increase in fixed-asset investment. Meanwhile, investments in emerging fields have grown rapidly, with high-tech manufacturing sector investment up by 27.6%, and high-tech services sector investment up by 17.7%. By comparison, Suzhou’s fixed-asset investment growth rate for the same period was only 5.5%.
According to Zeng Gang, dean of the Urban Development Research Institute at East China Normal University, despite similar economic foundations, Chengdu still possesses unique potential. As Chengdu is located in a region with strong provincial capitals and receives substantial policy support, its dependence is relatively low compared to Suzhou, which is situated in the Yangtze River Delta Region and can leverage economic strengths from surrounding cities. Suzhou also needs to cover a broader range for its influence. Despite this, Zeng believes that, considering current global geopolitical tensions and China facing new situations in international cooperation, especially with the expanding cooperation scale with Southeast Asia, South Asia, and countries and regions along the “Belt and Road” initiative, Chengdu is well-positioned for greater development space under national policy support with its solid industrial base, strong research capability, and leading economic vitality.
In the early stages of economic development, Suzhou chose to continue strengthening foreign investment attraction and proactively seize opportunities in emerging productive forces, such as the low-altitude economy. On April 26th, Suzhou held the “First Global Investment Promotion Conference”, and launched a global partnership program aimed at attracting global investors and entrepreneurs. Biomedicine, big health, robotics, and the low-altitude economy were the focus of the conference. Additionally, Suzhou has a strong interest in the productivity of new industries and has already set a goal to advance new industrialization earlier this year, planning to build a globally leading modern industrial system by 2035 and create a “City of Intelligent Manufacturing.”
Regarding the specific implementation of the low-altitude economy, Suzhou has shown its development intentions with clear actions. For instance, Taicang City in Suzhou hosted a low-altitude economy conference at the beginning of the year. Subsequently, Suzhou released the “Suzhou Low-altitude Economy High-quality Development Implementation Plan (2024–2026)”, focused on improving the city-wide route network layout and reasonably utilizing urban and regional low-altitude air space resources. By April, Suzhou held another conference to advance the development of the low-altitude economy, repeatedly emphasizing the development in accordance with scientific and market principles, hoping that these efforts will result in high-end platforms, advanced technologies, and major projects landing in Suzhou. Ultimately, creating pilot projects with demonstrative effects and gaining experience in the field of high-quality development of the low-altitude economy.
Looking at this year’s report card, Suzhou has already signed 251 low-altitude economy projects, with planned total investments exceeding 73 billion yuan, highlighting Suzhou’s ambition in the low-altitude economy field and its execution strength.
Suzhou city is currently focusing on promoting low-altitude manufacturing projects, having surpassed 150 projects, with planned investments exceeding 50 billion yuan. At the same time, Suzhou has signed 16 new low-altitude economic industry funds, with a total scale also exceeding 20 billion yuan.
Meanwhile, Chengdu city, despite facing stronger pressure, has chosen to consolidate its strengths and address its weaknesses. Building on the basis of existing investment growth, Chengdu continues to drive the “project is king” concept to foster economic growth. At the Chengdu major industrial project promotion event for the first quarter of 2024 held at the end of March this year, Chengdu proudly announced the launch of 40 important industrial projects, with a total investment of 96.8 billion yuan, and the planned investment amount for this year reaching 12.54 billion yuan.
Entering April, Chengdu city convened another meeting of the Foreign Opening Work Leadership Team and the city-wide Investment and Wisdom Attraction Work Promotion meeting, intending to intensify efforts to attract investment through a series of measures. The meeting emphasized the need to make good use of various opportunities, to hold “Chengdu Investment Theme Day” timely, to attract more key enterprises to hold supplier conferences in Chengdu, and to negotiate cooperation opportunities through “one-on-one” tracking and docking methods, in order to achieve greater effects.
In response to the weakness in the export sector, not just in Chengdu but the whole Sichuan province, all regions are actively seeking new markets. On April 17th, the Chengdu to Auckland flight route, which had been interrupted for four years, was resumed, and the first flight brought a Sichuan province delegation to the Southern Hemisphere, seeking new business opportunities. According to reports, the delegation has held over 30 events in New Zealand, Chile, and Brazil.
In terms of urban development strategy, Chengdu is also committed to integrating and complementing developments with Chongqing, striving for complementary advantages and joint prosperity of the two cities. With continued support and encouragement from the national government, the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing twin-city economic circle has entered its fifth year. The two places in Sichuan and Chongqing have implemented 161 key R&D projects in cooperation in critical fields such as integrated circuits, smart cars, new materials, bio-medicine, and others.
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