Which are the most developed Chinese cities?

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China is a very diverse country. Not surprising for the second most populous country in the world. Although being home to many different minorities, China is ethnically quite homogeneous. Despite that, there are quite a lot of regional differences in terms of culture, food and geography. Another way in which the different areas and in particular cities differ from one another, is by how developed they are.

If you’ve never been to China and haven’t payed that much attention to China, you might think it’s pretty much on par with the developed world. The Chinese government cares a lot about how China is portrayed to the outside world. The vast majority of the images you see coming out of China, are from the most developed cities, mostly tier 1 cities and sometimes tier 2 cities. However, if you know a bit more about China, have traveled outside of the major cities, you know that few countries have such a stark difference in development between it’s most and least developed areas.

The (unofficial) city tier system

For Chinese, it’s a well established fact that there are big differences between cities and areas as to how developed they are (although there are plenty of Chinese who have no idea how underdeveloped some parts of rural China are). Because of this, there is an informal tier system in China. People use this to classify how developed a city is. There isn’t one official ranking and people’s definition of a tier 2 or 3 city can vary slightly. Yicai Global (第一财经) has created one of the few, if not, the only ranking of all Chinese cities by how developed they are. They score the cities based on a large number of metrics in 5 dimensions:

• Concentration of commercial resources
• The extent to which a city serves as a commercial/infrastructure hub
• Vitality of urban residents
• Competitiveness in new industries
• Future adaptability

Based on the final score, which shows how developed and how commercially attractive the city is, the cities are grouped into one of 6 tiers. One important note is that Yicai Global ranks the cities as followed: 1, New Tier 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. As the label “New Tier 1” is invented by Yicai Global and basically never used by both Chinese and foreigners, I’ve decided to number the tiers from 1 until 6. The label “New Tier 1” is most likely introduced to make everyone feel better about their city, as they get a higher tier number.

The undisputed tier 1 cities

Although there isn’t an official ranking, there is one thing basically everyone on China can agree on: There are four tier 1 cities which are Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. In terms of GDP per capita (PPP), these 4 cities can be compared to the lower end of the high income countries. These are by far the most developed cities in China. If you’ve ever been to China, there’s a very very high chance you’ve been to one of these four cities. There are plenty of people who have been to China, but only stuck to the city centre of a tier 1 city and the very touristy areas. These people usually leave China with skewed image that it’s one of the most developed countries in the world. This is also why the Chinese government only wants the to show the outside world images of tier 1 cities. Hell, there’s even plenty of foreigners who live and work in a tier 1 city and never leave their bubble and believe that all of China is as developed as their upscale neighbourhood in Shanghai. The reality is that these 4 cities are far more developed than any other city in China. Even within these cities, the differences are big between neighbourhoods. As you can see, the average GDP per capita of these tier one cities is 50% higher than that of tier 2 cities, while being home to only 6% of China’s population.

A country of large contrasts

What this map shows is that, despite all the propaganda the CCP puts out, not all Chinese cities are like Beijing or Shanghai. In most western countries, the differences between cities and between rural and urban areas, are very small in terms of how developed they are. People forget that China is still a middle income country and even the tier 1 cities are comparable to the lower end of the high income countries. Nowhere near being “far ahead of the Western World” as the CCP often claims. On top of that, it’s also a massive country and the differences between cities are enormous. This map, based on Yicai Global’s ranking, creates a good picture of how developed the different Chinese cities are and how the Chinese population is distributed among them. Through this map, I want to give people a clearer and more realistic picture of the differences between Chinese cities in terms of how developed they are.

Keep in mind that the CCP is very good at carefully curation the image they want to show the outside world and making sure that even when foreigners visit China, they mostly get to see the best parts of the tier 1 and 2 cities. So, next time you visit China, try and see a bit more than just the city centres of the tier 1 and 2 cities and the touristy areas. Discover a bit more of the less developed areas and you’ll get a more realistic picture of China and at the same time, might stumble into some beautiful off the beaten track places in this beautiful country.