This "under-the-radar" provincial capital can no longer stay passive.

“A strong provincial capital makes a strong province, a thriving provincial capital makes a thriving province” — another Chinese province has once again stepped up its efforts to build a “strong provincial capital.”

Recently, Jiangxi Province held the “Conference on Implementing the Provincial Capital Leading Strategy and Promoting High-Quality Development of Nanchang’s Real Economy,” explicitly putting forward the goal to comprehensively enhance the provincial capital’s overall strength and development level; Nanchang must resolutely shoulder its primary responsibility, play the leading role, raise work standards across the board, and fully demonstrate the due responsibility of a provincial capital.

Although the meeting did not directly use the slogan “strong provincial capital,” the signal of continuously strengthening the provincial capital is clearly conveyed through its high-level specifications and detailed deployment.

Such a strong push is rarely seen across the country.

Behind this extraordinary major move, Jiangxi, a province long known as a “low-profile player,” shows its evident eagerness to build a strong provincial capital.

01

Nanchang truly needs to have a sense of urgency.

A key indicator is that among the six provincial capitals in central China, Nanchang’s primacy ratio (the proportion of the provincial capital’s economic output in the province) is only higher than that of Taiyuan, ranking second from the bottom. More surprisingly, although Jiangxi was one of the first provinces in recent years to explicitly support the “strong provincial capital” initiative and implement the “provincial capital leading” strategy, Nanchang’s primacy ratio has instead declined rather than risen.

Data shows that in 2006, the primacy ratios of Nanchang and Hefei were 25.36% and 17.48% respectively. By the end of 2025, Hefei’s ratio had risen to 26.82%, while Nanchang’s had dropped to 22.60%. Under such circumstances, it is naturally difficult to talk about demonstrating a sufficiently strong “provincial capital leading” effect.

What is even more noteworthy is that over the past few years, although Nanchang has gained growing popularity in the cultural and tourism sector and become a representative “internet-famous city,” its GDP growth rate has remained sluggish, falling below the provincial and national average levels for multiple quarters.

Previously, Jiangxi had set a target: by 2025, the proportion of Nanchang’s regional GDP in the province will rise to around 25%, and its ranking among national provincial capitals will rise to 12th place.

Now it appears that none of these targets have been achieved.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the vigorous nationwide wave of “building strong provincial capitals” in recent years, Nanchang may be one of the provincial capitals with the least substantial results.

Faced with such reality, Jiangxi’s “provincial capital leading” strategy truly urgently needs a 2.0 version. This recent conference may serve as an important turning point.

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The theme of this conference, which focuses on “promoting the high-quality development of Nanchang’s real economy,” can be said to be quite profound in implication.

This point may come as a surprise to some people, after all, what made Nanchang most well-known in the past few years is precisely its image as an “internet-famous city.”

But in fact, Nanchang has always been an established industrial city at its core.

Not to mention that this city once gave birth to the New China’s first aircraft and many other “firsts” in the industrial field, in the national land spatial master plan approved by the State Council, one of Nanchang’s official positioning is still “a regional advanced manufacturing base.”

In terms of actual performance, Nanchang also stands out in one aspect: the proportion of its secondary industry still exceeds 40% to this day, ranking first among the six provincial capitals in central China.

It can be said that Nanchang’s manufacturing foundation and the underlying strength of its real economy should not be underestimated. This is also the comparative advantage that Nanchang possesses.

Therefore, anchoring the path to “building a strong provincial capital” on the real economy is in line with Nanchang’s reality. And a strong industrial sector is itself the key for a provincial capital to truly grow strong and be able to lead the development of the entire province.

However, it must be pointed out that Nanchang’s current relatively high proportion of secondary industry does not mean that the manufacturing sector has truly taken on the leading role.

On one hand, Nanchang’s four existing 100-billion-yuan industrial clusters — electronic information industry, automobile and new energy automobile industry, green food industry, and new materials industry — still have obvious gaps in both scale and competitiveness compared with sister cities in central China such as Wuhan and Changsha.

In particular, industries such as electronic information and automobiles are undergoing in-depth restructuring. If there are no breakthroughs in transformation, the existing advantages may also be weakened.

On the other hand, the relatively low proportion of the tertiary industry is exactly mutually causal with Nanchang’s low primacy ratio.

Because this means that Nanchang has limited agglomeration capacity for service-oriented industries within the province, and even in the high-end service sector, it faces the pressure of being “siphoned off” by strong surrounding regions.

Behind this, there is a direct relationship with Nanchang’s special geographical location as the only provincial capital in China that adjoins the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the West Coast Economic Zone of the Taiwan Straits.

To a certain extent, whether this geographically advantageous position — which connects multiple major economic zones — can be transformed from a status of being more “siphoned off” to one that attracts more open development factors, is an important dimension to judge whether Nanchang is truly “strong.”

03

In a sense, Jiangxi is perhaps one of the provinces that most urgently needs a “strong provincial capital.”

Looking at Nanchang itself, both its economic scale and population size are relatively limited; at the same time, as an ordinary provincial capital, it does not have the development level of a sub-provincial capital city.

Moreover, it is obviously at a disadvantage in the agglomeration of high-end factors such as higher education and innovation platforms.

This conference also proposed to strengthen the attraction and cultivation of scientific and technological talents, comprehensively enhance the core competitiveness of industries; and focus on solving the problem of “insufficient factor guarantee.”

Therefore, without the support at the provincial level, relying solely on its own strength, it is difficult for Nanchang to truly rise to become a highly competitive regional growth pole.

In fact, looking across the country, the rise of strong provincial capitals, in addition to objective factors such as history and geography, largely depends on the strategic determination and support intensity of the province where they are located.

For Jiangxi, it truly needs a provincial capital with sufficient industrial level to effectively lead the development of the whole province, to resist the continuous “siphon effect” from the three major urban agglomerations around it.

Local official media also clearly pointed out that “the in-depth implementation of the provincial capital leading strategy is intended to build a core growth pole and gain strategic initiative in the new round of regional competition.”

Therefore, Jiangxi’s continuous strong support for Nanchang over the years is undoubtedly correct in direction.

The “Several Measures on Deeply Implementing the Provincial Capital Leading Strategy and Enhancing Nanchang’s Comprehensive Strength and Development Level” issued by Jiangxi last year further made it clear that, in addition to the powers that can only be exercised at the provincial level as explicitly stipulated by laws and regulations, the provincial-level economic management powers related to Nanchang will in principle be delegated to Nanchang for exercise.

But attitude is one thing, and effect is another. The new signals released by this conference are even more worthy of attention. For example, before the meeting, relevant departments determined 408 enterprises for investigation and visits on the basis of precise screening, covering the entire upstream, midstream, and downstream of the industrial chain. The conference explicitly proposed to accelerate the creation of a first-class business environment.

At the same time, Nanchang also made it clear that it will adhere to the principle of building the city through manufacturing, strengthen investment attraction led by existing enterprises, attract more development factors to gather in Nanchang, continuously improve the industrial chain, and work together to promote the growth and strengthening of leading industries.

This direction can be said to hit the essence of the problem. After all, regional competition is in the final analysis industrial competition, and industrial competition ultimately falls on enterprises.

For Nanchang, the most immediate choice to achieve real breakthroughs in leading industries may lie in introducing a number of leading and “chain-master” enterprises through optimizing the business environment and improving factor guarantees.

In this regard, Jiangxi’s 15th Five-Year Plan has proposed the implementation of a chain-master enterprise cultivation program, striving to cultivate and introduce 1-2 chain-master enterprises in each industrial cluster, and adding a number of 10-billion-yuan and 100-billion-yuan leading enterprises in characteristic and advantageous fields.

This point can be said to be particularly important for Nanchang.

Then, in the new development cycle, whether Nanchang can achieve fundamental breakthroughs in this aspect is worth observing. Earlier efforts to refocus on reshaping its industrial foundation and accelerate the improvement of its internal development level are the reality that all provincial capitals seeking to “grow strong” should recognize. Nanchang is no exception.

This article is from the WeChat public account “Western City Story”, author: Xibu Jun, published with authorization from 36Kr.