After being overtaken by Anhui, can Hunan stage a comeback with its "dual sub-centers" development strategy?
Recently, Hunan has released *Several Policies and Measures on Supporting Yueyang City and Hengyang City to Accelerate the Construction of Provincial Sub-central Cities*. This marks Hunan's second round of policy support for the two sub-central cities following the relevant arrangements in 2021.
Hunan's move to ramp up support for the two sub-central cities comes against a not-so-optimistic backdrop. In the first half of this year, the growth rate of Hunan's gross domestic product (hereinafter referred to as "GDP") was only 2.7%, overtaken by Anhui, dropping out of the national top 10 GDP rankings. The "position swap between Anhui and Hunan" has become a notable highlight of regional economic performance in the first half of the year. In the second half of the year, if Hunan wants to return to the national top 10 GDP list, what role can the two sub-central cities play?
Fu Yi, a professor from the Business School of Central South University, believes that to return to the national top 10 GDP, Hunan's fundamental foundation still lies in the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration, and it is unrealistic to pin all hopes on Yueyang and Hengyang. Anhui's overtaking of Hunan is mainly driven by the Hefei Metropolitan Circle. Only when the provincial capital becomes stronger can the whole province thrive. The construction of Yueyang and Hengyang as provincial sub-central cities is a key starting point for Hunan's competition in the central region in the future, but the most critical starting point remains the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration, especially for Changsha to further expand and strengthen its strength. With Changsha growing stronger, coupled with the support of Yueyang and Hengyang, Hunan can form a more coordinated regional structure and have the possibility of returning to the national top 10 at an early date.
"Helping Hands"
Over the past few years, Hunan has been under considerable pressure in both demographic and economic dimensions.
In terms of population, the province's permanent resident population has declined for 5 consecutive years from 2021 to 2025, with a total reduction of 1.5339 million people. In terms of economy, the GDP growth rate in the first quarter of this year was only 3%, 2 percentage points lower than the national average growth rate; it further dropped to 2.7% in the first half of the year, also 2 percentage points lower than the national average, overtaken by Anhui with a gap of 33.64 billion yuan, and dropped out of the national top 10 GDP rankings.
A noteworthy structural problem is that the whole province of Hunan relies too much on Changsha. In 2025, Changsha's GDP accounted for 28.7% of the province's total, and the combined GDP of the three cities in the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration only accounted for 34.8%, with limited driving effect as the "core". While Yueyang, the second largest city in terms of GDP, only accounts for 9.7% of the province's total GDP, the whole province lacks a real "second growth pole". Cultivating new growth momentum outside the provincial capital has become an inevitable choice for Hunan.
In fact, Hunan established the positioning of Yueyang and Hengyang as provincial sub-central cities as early as 2020. In August 2021, Hunan issued the *Opinions on Supporting Yueyang City to Accelerate the Construction of a Provincial Sub-central City* and the *Opinions on Supporting Hengyang City to Accelerate the Construction of a Provincial Sub-central City*, and set the goal that by 2025, the GDP of Yueyang will exceed 600 billion yuan and that of Hengyang will reach 550 billion yuan. However, the actual completion performance is not ideal. In 2025, the GDP of Yueyang was 538.688 billion yuan, and that of Hengyang was 468.955 billion yuan, both falling short of the set targets. Six years later, Hunan once again proposed to support Yueyang and Hengyang to accelerate the construction of provincial sub-central cities.
Fu Yi believes that Hunan's re-emphasis on the construction of the dual sub-central cities of Yueyang and Hengyang is not only a short-term response strategy, but also a long-term layout plan.
In the short term, this decision is based on realistic demographic factors. The labor force in southern Hunan mainly flows to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, while the labor force in northern Hunan mainly flows to the Wuhan Metropolitan Circle. If Yueyang and Hengyang are developed well, they can alleviate the outflow of labor force to a certain extent. At the same time, emphasizing the "cultivation" of the economic momentum of the two cities is exactly to increase their economic volume through policy empowerment, and gradually narrow the gap with Anhui and other central provinces.
In the long run, there are three levels of strategic considerations: first, to solve regional imbalance. As the provincial capital, Changsha has always had insufficient radiation and driving effect on southern Hunan and the Dongting Lake area. As the two major fulcrums in the north and south, Yueyang and Hengyang can open up the channel for the provincial capital to radiate to the whole province; second, to build an open channel. Yueyang is the only port city in Hunan that connects rivers and reaches the sea, and Hengyang is located at the key hub of the Hunan-Guangdong railway. Both of them are of great strategic significance for Hunan to build an open channel that connects rivers and reaches the sea; third, to benchmark against regional competition, learn from the multi-polar model of "strong provincial capital + sub-central city" in Hubei, Jiangxi and other provinces, so as to seize a more favorable position in the competition of central China.
The purpose of choosing to strengthen Yueyang and Hengyang is exactly to add two "capable helpers" for the growth of Changsha. Yueyang and Hengyang should provide supporting facilities for the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration, and undertake different regional missions at the same time. Yueyang will build a main channel for Hunan to connect rivers and reach the sea, and further integrate into the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Hengyang will drive the development of the entire southern Hunan region and become the "bridgehead" for Hunan to integrate into the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
"Potential"
In 2025, the GDP of Yueyang and Hengyang ranked the second and fourth in the province respectively, and the combined proportion of the two cities in the province's total GDP was 18.2%.
From the perspective of geographical location, Yueyang is located at the northern gateway of Hunan, adjacent to the Yangtze River, and is the forefront of Hunan's connection to the Yangtze River Economic Belt; Hengyang is located in the hinterland of south-central Hunan, on the Beijing-Guangzhou transport artery, and is the node for Hunan to connect to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area southward. The two cities, one in the north and the other in the south, have different geographical endowments and different development priorities.
Yueyang's advantage lies in its ports. It is the only city in Hunan that currently has Yangtze River ports and the golden waterway. Chenglingji Port is its core resource, and transport hub and port logistics are its greatest strengths.
In terms of industry, Yueyang is the city with the most concentrated distribution of petrochemical industry in Hunan. Leading enterprises such as Changling Refining & Chemical and Baling Petrochemical are gathered here, and the petrochemical industry has become the first 100-billion-yuan industry in Yueyang. In 2023, the output value and tax revenue of the petrochemical industry accounted for 60% and 70% of the provincial total respectively.
According to the Yueyang municipal government's plan, by 2030, the total output value of Yueyang's modern petrochemical industry will exceed 500 billion yuan. Yueyang will build a core base of Hunan's 1-trillion-yuan modern petrochemical industry, and strive to become the eighth largest petrochemical industry base in China outside the seven coastal petrochemical industry bases.
In Fu Yi's view, Yueyang also has many problems. First, the development of high-tech industry and green industry is relatively lagging behind, and the industrial structure is overly dependent on heavy industries. Second, it lacks high-level regional universities and national-level science and innovation platforms, making it difficult to effectively convert port advantages into industrial advantages. Third, Yueyang is located in the Dongting Lake Ecological Economic Zone, and adjacent to the Yangtze River at the same time, so the control of ecological red lines is relatively strict, and its development space is restricted to a certain extent.
However, after Yueyang, Changde, which ranks third in Hunan's GDP, was not selected, while Hengyang, which ranks fourth, was selected as the provincial sub-central city. The economic volume cannot fully explain the logic of selecting sub-central cities.
In fact, when Yueyang and Hengyang were already connected to national trunk lines such as the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway, Changde did not end the history of having no high-speed rail access until 2022. In terms of location, Changde is very close to Changsha, so it is difficult to jump out of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan Metropolitan Circle and independently exert its radiation function. The permanent resident population of Changde in 2025 was 5.107 million, far lower than the 6.3636 million of Hengyang. In addition, Changde and Yueyang both belong to the Dongting Lake area in northern Hunan, and their industrial structures are similar. In southern and southwestern Hunan, there is a lack of a central city. To balance the north-south development gap, Hengyang has become an inevitable choice.
Hengyang is located on the Beijing-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway and the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway artery, and is an important node for Hunan to connect to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. In terms of higher education resources, Hengyang has universities such as University of South China. In terms of industrial foundation, Hengyang's UHV power transmission and transformation equipment industry has been included in Hunan's national-level industrial clusters.
Fu Yi believes that the application scenarios of the UHV power transmission and transformation equipment industry are mainly in the northwest region. Without local application scenarios, Hengyang has still developed this industry to a relatively high level, which reflects its industrial cultivation capability of "creating something out of nothing". However, Hengyang's shortcomings are also obvious: its water transport conditions are not as good as Yueyang, and it lacks port resources that connect rivers and reach the sea. The urban renewal of its central urban area is relatively slow, and the agglomeration and driving effect of the main urban area is not prominent enough. Although Hengyang has channel advantages, it has not converted them into hub economic advantages - most of the traffic is transit traffic, lacking logistics headquarters and bulk commodity trading platforms, and the "flow" of the channel has not been converted into "retention".
Fu Yi suggested that the positioning of the two cities should be differentiated and they should pursue dislocation development. Yueyang is more suitable to be positioned as a port-side open city, focusing on developing water transport logistics and basic industries, and giving full play to the port hub function. Hengyang is more suitable to be positioned as an inland transport hub and public service center, strengthening its land transport advantages, and promoting the transformation from "transport channel" to "comprehensive hub".
Such a dislocation layout also has precedents to follow. Yichang and Xiangyang in Hubei are typical examples of differentiated division of labor - Yichang is located on the golden waterway of the Yangtze River, positioned as a port hub; Xiangyang is located in the northwest of Hubei Province, positioned as a railway hub. The two cities are both provincial sub-central cities, but each takes charge of its own area and performs its own duties, forming a complementary rather than competitive relationship.
"Parallel Advancement"
In 2003, the State Council approved the *Urban System Plan of Hubei Province*, which clearly designated Yichang and Xiangyang as provincial sub-central cities. This is the earliest appearance of the concept of provincial sub-central cities in official documents.
Since then, many provinces have followed up the layout. For example, among the six central provinces, there are 11 officially recognized sub-central cities, namely Luoyang and Anyang in Henan, Wuhu in Anhui, Datong, Changzhi and Linfen in Shanxi, Ganzhou in Jiangxi, Yichang and Xiangyang in Hubei, and Yueyang and Hengyang in Hunan.
However, when the "strong provincial capital strategy" and the "construction of provincial sub-central cities" are promoted simultaneously, a practical problem has emerged: how to coordinate the resource allocation between the strong provincial capital and the sub-central cities? The former requires resources to continue to concentrate in the provincial capital, while the latter requires resources to tilt towards the sub-central cities. The two seem to form a contradiction in resource allocation.
Ye Qing, a professor from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and former deputy director of Hubei Provincial Bureau of Statistics, believes that there is no conflict between "building a strong provincial capital" and "constructing sub-central cities". Taking Hubei as an example, the distance between Wuhan, Xiangyang and Yichang is about 300 kilometers, which exactly forms a stable "golden triangle", driving the three major regions of eastern Hubei, northwest Hubei and southwest Hubei respectively. In his view, the core of current regional competition is to expand the overall economic volume. The provincial capital needs to be strengthened, and the sub-central cities also need to be expanded.
Fu Yi holds a similar view: Wuhan is already very strong, but it still needs the two sub-central cities of Xiangyang and Yichang to drive the surrounding cities through them. This is a transmission chain where the provincial capital radiates the sub-central cities, and the sub-central cities then radiate and drive a wider area. It is relatively appropriate for Hunan to choose Yueyang and Hengyang as provincial sub-central cities, because the gap between the economic volume of the two cities and Changsha is relatively small, and they have the conditions for priority cultivation.
But Fu Yi also mentioned that if Hunan wants to truly achieve coordinated regional development, it needs to layout another provincial sub-central city in the western Hunan region. With the construction and promotion of the New International Land-Sea Corridor in the western region, cities such as Huaihua and Shaoyang can also have the conditions to cultivate provincial sub-central cities.
However, in the practice of building provincial sub-central cities, the progress of some cities is not satisfactory. Liuzhou in Guangxi was once regarded as the sub-central city of Guangxi. In recent years, the image of this city in the public eye, in addition to its famous Liuzhou rice noodles, is more associated with labels such as "unfinished metro projects" and "debt resolution". Economic data also reflects this dilemma: Liuzhou's GDP exceeded 300 billion yuan for the first time in 2018, and it almost stagnated in the following 7 years, even dropping to 295.067 billion yuan in 2024, and did not return to the 300-billion-yuan mark until 2025.
Qujing in Yunnan is also facing similar pressure. Previously, the "Qujing Tong" government service APP, which is part of the "one-stop service" informatization construction of the "urban brain" in Qujing, announced its shutdown, which attracted public attention. Qujing's GDP growth rate in 2025 was 3.5%, lower than the provincial average level of 4.1%; the growth rate in the first half of 2026 was 1.6%, also lower than the provincial growth rate of 2.5%.
Fu Yi believes that the provincial sub-central city construction model is more suitable for provinces with a medium level of economic development. For provinces with overly strong economic strength, the radiation power of the provincial capital itself is sufficient to cover the whole province, so the necessity of sub-central cities is low; for provinces with overly weak economic strength, the gap between the provincial capital and prefecture-level cities is too large, and it is difficult to find a city that can truly undertake the function of a sub-central city.
Ye Qing believes that the selection of sub-central cities should first consider the total economic volume. The cities that rank second and third in GDP in the province are relatively appropriate choices, and location conditions should also be taken into account. In his view, the key for sub-central cities is to give full play to their respective advantages and achieve complementarity. The top three cities in a province should all be planned as key priorities for regional development.
This article is from WeChat Official Account "Economic Observer", Author: Liu Yaning, Published with authorization from 36Kr.