The 10-year evolution of the top 30 GDP cities: Tianjin drops out of the top ten, Hefei makes a comeback, and Nantong emerges as a "dark horse".
Recently, as local regions have successively released their economic operation data, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of urban areas in the first half of 2025 has been gradually announced. In terms of rankings, the positions of leading cities have remained stable, while there have been relatively obvious changes among the 17th to 30th ranked cities.
Chart by Liu Yaning
Among the top 30 cities in terms of GDP, Nantong has risen the fastest in the rankings, moving from the 23rd place in 2024 to the 18th place in the first half of 2025.
If we extend the timeline and observe the list of the top 30 cities in terms of GDP from 2016 to the first half of 2025, the changes in the rankings are even more significant. Ten years ago, Tianjin, which was ranked 5th among the top 10 cities, has disappeared from the top 10 list, replaced by Nanjing. Meanwhile, Ningbo has risen from the 15th place to the 11th place.
Other cities with declining rankings include Dongguan, Foshan, and Quanzhou. Both Dongguan and Foshan have dropped out of the top 20. Quanzhou was among the top 20 for four years but has since dropped to the 23rd place in the first half of this year. Hefei, on the other hand, has risen from the 25th place in 2016 to the 20th place in the first half of this year. In addition, during these 10 years, three cities have newly entered the top 30 list, namely Wenzhou, Xuzhou, and Changzhou.
This article attempts to decode the changes in the rankings of urban GDP over the past 10 years by focusing on three indicators: the added value of the secondary industry, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size, and the total volume of foreign trade imports and exports. What did the cities that have risen in the rankings do right? And what kind of transformation dilemmas have the overtaken cities encountered?
01
Industry! Still Industry!
Analysis shows that industrial economic data have played a decisive role in the changes in rankings. In 2024, Foshan's ranking dropped from the 17th place to the 20th place, and its GDP growth rate declined from 5% in the previous year to 1.3%, which is closely related to the slowdown in industrial growth.
Since the first quarter of 2024, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Foshan has started to "stall." Looking at the whole year, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Foshan decreased by 1.9% year-on-year. At the beginning of 2024, Foshan had just announced the news that "the total industrial output value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Foshan exceeded 3 trillion yuan in 2023," making it the "fourth industrial city in China" after Shenzhen, Suzhou, and Shanghai.
The Foshan Statistics Bureau once explained the decline in the first quarter of 2024: On the basis of the high base in the past two years, the industrial economy of enterprises above designated size in Foshan, combined with the impact of the downturn in the real estate market, has faced increasing pressure to maintain stable growth. The added value of industries such as the metal products industry, special equipment manufacturing industries such as ceramic presses, and the rubber and plastic products industry, which are closely related to the real estate industry, has decreased to varying degrees.
"There is Foshan's products in every family" was once a resounding slogan in Foshan. Data show that Foshan's pan-home furnishing industry has become an industrial cluster with a scale of over one trillion yuan, bringing together 22 major categories such as ceramics, home appliances, furniture, and hardware, and is an important pillar of Foshan's economic development. In the first half of 2025, Foshan's GDP growth rate increased by 2.3% year-on-year, ranking second from the bottom among the 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong.
Dongguan is in a similar situation to Foshan, and its turning point occurred in 2020. In 2019, Dongguan's GDP growth rate was 7.4%, ranking second among the 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong, and the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 8.5% year-on-year.
In 2020, Dongguan's GDP ranking dropped from the 19th place in 2019 to the 24th place, and it has remained around the 24th place in the following years. Under the general impact of the epidemic, Dongguan's GDP increased by 1.1% year-on-year in this year, ranking second from the bottom among the 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong, and the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size decreased by 1.1% year-on-year, with the growth rate significantly slowing down.
In 2021, Dongguan's ranking rose slightly by one place. In this year, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Dongguan increased by 10.2%, which also brought Dongguan's GDP growth rate back to the 10th place in Guangdong Province. In 2022, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Dongguan decreased by 1.3% year-on-year, and for the same indicator, it was -1.9% in 2023. Among them, the added value of the five major pillar industries of industrial enterprises above designated size decreased by 1% compared with the previous year; the added value of the four characteristic industries of industry decreased by 9.9%. Dongguan's GDP growth rate ranked last among the 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong this year. The negative growth of the pillar industries has had a significant impact on Dongguan's economy.
In 2024, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Dongguan increased by 6.9% year-on-year, but compared with Quanzhou and Nantong, which have similar GDP totals, its growth rate of the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size is still lower than that of these two cities. In the first half of 2025, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Dongguan increased by 5.1% year-on-year, again falling short of Quanzhou and Xi'an, which have similar GDP totals. Therefore, Dongguan's GDP ranking has not risen.
Over the past 10 years, Tianjin has experienced the most significant decline in rankings. The landmark event was that after the major explosion in Binhai New Area in 2015, the rectification of hazardous chemical enterprises and the tightening of the approval of chemical projects in the whole city had a direct impact on Tianjin, which is mainly based on traditional heavy and light industries.
In 2019, Tianjin dropped from the 6th place to the 10th place, and being trapped by the industrial economy was also the main reason. At the beginning of 2020, Tianjin revised its regional GDP for 2018 and 2019, and the total GDP of Tianjin shrank by 54.4672 billion yuan. Among the reduction of 54.4672 billion yuan, the reduction in the industrial sector was the largest, reaching 27.7451 billion yuan. In 2019, the added value of the secondary industry in Tianjin was 494.718 billion yuan, which is only equivalent to the level around 2010 compared with the pre-revision value.
The indirect impact of the major explosion in 2015 on Tianjin is also far-reaching. Since 2017, the growth rate of fixed asset investment in Tianjin has mostly lagged behind the national average level during the same period, weakening the support for economic growth. In particular, the investment in Tianjin increased by -9.9% and -16.4% in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
During these 10 years, Tianjin, which relied too much on traditional industries, failed to seize the development opportunities in the Internet era and cultivate competitive emerging industries. After the decline, Tianjin has basically maintained the 11th place. In 2024, it was overtaken by Ningbo again and is currently only ranked 12th.
Like Foshan, Dongguan and other cities, industry supports Quanzhou's urban development and affects its overall economic performance. Since 2023, Quanzhou's GDP ranking has dropped out of the top 20.
Lu Zhenkui, a professor at the School of Business of Quanzhou Normal University, believes that Quanzhou's industry is large but not strong. At the end of 2018, there were 45,637 legal entities of industrial enterprises in the secondary industry in Quanzhou, 3.56 times that of Fuzhou and 2.41 times that of Hefei. However, the operating income per industrial enterprise in Quanzhou was 38.8167 million yuan, which is only a little more than half of that of Fuzhou and also lower than Hefei's 41.6917 million yuan.
In 2023, the proportion of the primary industry in Quanzhou was only 2.1%, the proportion of the secondary industry was 53.2%, and the proportion of the tertiary industry was 44.7%. It can be seen that industry plays an obvious role in driving Quanzhou's economy. However, the growth rate of the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Quanzhou was only 3.3% in 2023. For the same indicator, it was 3.9% in 2022 and 9.1% in 2021. As an industrial city, the decline in Quanzhou's industrial growth rate affects its GDP ranking.
From 2024 to the first half of 2025, the growth rate of the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Quanzhou has rebounded, reaching 7.8% and 8% respectively, but its foreign trade situation remains sluggish.
02
Foreign Trade Has Slowed Down
The fluctuations in foreign trade also have a significant impact on the urban economic pattern. Taking Quanzhou as an example, this famous commercial city, which was once known as the "No. 1 Port in the East" in history, has seen a continuous slump in its foreign trade performance in recent years: In 2023, the total volume of imports and exports in Quanzhou decreased by 4.0% year-on-year.
In 2024, Quanzhou's GDP ranking was overtaken by Xi'an. In this year, the total volume of imports and exports in Quanzhou rebounded to 4.5%, but the total volume of imports and exports in Xi'an during the same period had achieved double-digit growth. In the first half of 2025, the total volume of imports and exports in Quanzhou decreased again, with a year-on-year decrease of 9.1%.
As an important processing and OEM production base in the world, Dongguan has a much higher degree of foreign trade dependence than ordinary cities. Data show that in 1995, Dongguan's foreign trade dependence once reached as high as 433.8%.
"One out of every four smartphones in the world is made in Dongguan" and "One out of every five computers in the world is made in Dongguan"... In 2022, the total volume of foreign trade imports and exports in Dongguan decreased by 8.7% year-on-year; in 2023, the total volume of imports and exports decreased by 8.2% year-on-year. This growth rate indirectly led to Dongguan's GDP growth rate being lower than the national average level in these two years.
In January 2024, Dongguan issued several measures to support the high-quality development of the integration of domestic and foreign trade, encouraging enterprises to actively participate in overseas exhibitions and accelerating the "going out" to explore emerging markets. Perhaps the policy effect has begun to show. In the first half of 2025, the total volume of foreign trade imports and exports in Dongguan was 749.28 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.5%. Among them, the import volume increased by 27.0% year-on-year, and the export volume increased by 10.6% year-on-year.
Foshan, which also relies heavily on foreign trade, has also encountered challenges. In the first quarter of 2024, its imports and exports decreased by 33.1% year-on-year, and the export decline reached 40.4%. The foreign trade scale dropped from the 10th place in the country in the same period last year to the 17th place. Looking at the whole year, the total volume of imports and exports decreased by 16.2%, among which exports decreased by 20.5%.
However, for Dongguan and Foshan, due to different industrial structures, their recoveries in foreign trade also have different manifestations. Dongguan's foreign trade is mainly based on electronic products such as mobile phones and computers. In the first half of 2025, the export of high-tech products in Dongguan increased by 23.4% year-on-year, among which the export of high-end equipment increased by 25% and the export of electronic information products increased by 23.4%.
In contrast, Foshan's foreign trade is still dominated by traditional manufacturing industries such as mechanical equipment and home appliances. Under the dual pressures of the reconstruction of the global industrial chain and the contraction of demand, the export momentum of such labor-intensive industries has significantly weakened. In the first half of 2025, the export of electromechanical products in Foshan increased by 7.2% year-on-year, and the export of high-tech products increased by 7.1% year-on-year, both achieving only single-digit growth.
Under the double slump of industry and foreign trade, in the first half of 2025, Foshan's ranking dropped again, falling out of the top 20 to the 21st place.
03
Winning in Emerging Industries
Different from the cities trapped by the industrial downturn and the slowdown in foreign trade, some cities are rising rapidly through emerging industries.
In 2024, Nantong's GDP increased by 6.2% year-on-year, ranking second among the trillion-yuan cities. In the first half of 2025, Nantong's GDP ranking entered the top 20, rising to the 18th place. Since Nantong entered the "trillion-yuan club" in 2020, it has put forward a plan to become the "third city in Jiangsu." It should be said that Nantong's rise not only relies on its original industrial foundation but also seizes the opportunities of emerging industries.
In the first half of this year, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size in Nantong increased by 7.8%, 0.4 percentage points higher than the average value in Jiangsu Province, ranking fourth among the 13 prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu Province.
In addition, in recent years, Nantong has continuously made efforts in the field of emerging industries. The annual output value scale of its new generation of information technology industry exceeds 200 billion yuan, and it has accumulated certain technological strength and industrial chain supporting capabilities in fields such as integrated circuits, electronic components and materials, and has gathered a number of high-quality enterprises such as Tongfu Microelectronics, Jiejie Microelectronics, Diodes, Yutai Semiconductor, Shennan Circuits, and Yueya Semiconductor. Zhu Zhenyu, the deputy director of the Bureau of Industry and Information Technology of Nantong City, recently said that it is planned to strive to break through 320 billion yuan in the scale of industries related to the new generation of information technology by 2025.
Hefei is also in a similar situation to Nantong. In 2016, Hefei's GDP ranking was the 25th place; in 2024, it rose to the 19th place and successfully promoted to a "city with a GDP of one trillion yuan and a population of one million."
Cao Xianzhong, a professor at the Institute of Urban Development of East China Normal University, once told the Policy Research Institute that Hefei's industrial system is called "Chip, Screen, New Energy Vehicle, and Synthetic Materials." Chip refers to integrated circuits, Screen refers to display panels, New Energy Vehicle refers to new energy vehicles, and Synthetic Materials refers to synthetic materials. These four high-tech industries not only enable Hefei's GDP to grow rapidly but also attract a large number of people to Hefei.
In the first half of