The top prefecture-level city is sprinting toward the 6-trillion-yuan target.

On September 20, Suzhou, China's top prefecture-level city and second strongest industrial city, made it clear at the 14th Party Congress it held: Focusing on highlighting the strategy of building the city through industry, strengthening the city via innovation, and invigorating the city with opening-up, the report proposes to accelerate breakthroughs in developing new quality productive forces in light of local conditions. Through five years of efforts, the total output value of industries above designated size will be increased by another 1 trillion yuan, 4 trillion-yuan-level and 15 100-billion-yuan-level industries will be formed at a faster pace, and 1 to 2 more Fortune Global 500 enterprises will be cultivated.

What does it mean to drive the total industrial output value to increase by another 1 trillion yuan in five years? At the end of last year, Suzhou's total industrial output value reached 4.94 trillion yuan, ranking second nationwide, only after Shenzhen's 5.44 trillion yuan. Adding another 1 trillion yuan in five years means sprinting toward the 6 trillion yuan mark.

In addition, Suzhou also aims to increase the number of trillion-yuan-level industries to 4 in five years.

At present, Suzhou has three trillion-yuan-level industries, namely the electronic information, equipment manufacturing, and new materials industries, with respective output values of 1494.4 billion yuan, 1624.3 billion yuan, and 1021.1 billion yuan.

Of course, what is referred to here is the concept of industrial clusters, not the concept of individual major categories of the 41 industrial industries divided by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. From the perspective of individual industrial industries, Suzhou boasts 13 100-billion-yuan-level industries, the largest number of such industries across the country, more than that of Shenzhen and Shanghai. Among them, the electronic information industry exceeds 1 trillion yuan, reaching 1.49 trillion yuan, ranking second nationwide, second only to the nearly 3 trillion yuan of Shenzhen's electronic information industry.

As a city that is only an ordinary prefecture-level city in administrative rank, Suzhou's economic and industrial strength has reached the peak of its administrative level, becoming a development model for all prefecture-level cities across the country. Suzhou has also successfully interpreted that industry is the foundation of a city's development, and only a strong industry can secure a promising future.

How did Suzhou's industry grow to be so powerful

Here comes the key question: What will Suzhou rely on to add another 1 trillion yuan to its total industrial output value in the next five years? Let's leave this question aside for now and first understand how Suzhou grew step by step.

Suzhou's first bucket of gold in industry came from township enterprises. In 1985, the total industrial output value of Suzhou's township enterprises reached 9.634 billion yuan, ranking first among all cities in China. By 1988, township industry had accounted for half of Suzhou's total industrial output value; in 1992, this proportion further reached two-thirds. This batch of township enterprises left a large number of manufacturing entrepreneurs, workers and supply chains for Suzhou.

The second bucket of gold came from foreign-funded enterprises. In the early 1990s, Suzhou focused on building development zones. By the end of 1994, the city had 14 national and provincial-level development zones and 130 township industrial parks. In the first three years of the development zones' operation, Suzhou's actual utilized foreign capital reached 4.56 billion U.S. dollars, equivalent to 11 times the total of the previous 7 years.

The industrial park is the real accelerator for Suzhou's industry. In 1994, Suzhou took another move that had a huge impact later on: the construction of Suzhou Industrial Park. As a China-Singapore cooperation project, it introduced Singapore's park management, urban planning, and investment attraction systems to Suzhou. Ten years later, the GDP of the park rose from about 1.14 billion yuan in 1994 to 50.3 billion yuan, a 44-fold increase; its import and export volume reached 28.1 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of more than 9000 times.

More importantly, this model did not stop at the industrial park. Kunshan, Changshu, Zhangjiagang, Taicang, Wujiang... all the county-level cities are vigorously developing industries. As a result, Suzhou has gradually formed a very special structure: It is not one single city supporting several large enterprises, but a group of cities jointly supporting an entire industrial network. This is the very confidence that supported Suzhou to later rush to the 5 trillion yuan mark.

After 2000, China joined the WTO, and the global manufacturing industry shifted to China on a large scale. Suzhou took the opportunity to undertake industries such as electronic information and equipment manufacturing. Foreign capital brought orders, technologies and global supply chains, while local enterprises continued to extend to the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. From OEM to supporting, from supporting to components, and then from components to core links. The industry has been growing bigger and bigger in this way.

Of course, Suzhou also encountered difficulties in the process. Public data shows that as early as 2013, the total output value of industries above designated size in Suzhou exceeded 3 trillion yuan, ranking second nationwide only after Shanghai. At that time, this indicator of Shenzhen was only 2.3 trillion yuan, with a gap as high as 700 billion yuan from Suzhou.

This year was exactly the year with the largest industrial investment scale in Suzhou, reaching 243.13 billion yuan, accounting for 40.5% of the city's total fixed asset investment.

However, after that, Shenzhen embarked on a path of rapid growth, exceeding 3 trillion yuan in 2017, while Suzhou's growth rate slowed down significantly, reaching only 3.2 trillion yuan in the same year, and the gap narrowed to less than 200 billion yuan. Only one year later, in 2018, Shenzhen overtook Suzhou. Coincidentally, in that year, Suzhou's industrial investment scale plummeted directly from 198.33 billion yuan in the previous year to 110.24 billion yuan.

Today, Shenzhen's total industrial output value and industrial operating revenue are both moving toward the 6 trillion yuan mark. After that, Suzhou woke up to the situation, continuously increased its industrial investment, and reached 210 billion yuan again in 2024.

In 2025, Suzhou's industrial investment scale increased to 225.037 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 40% of the total investment again, reaching 39.4%. With continuous capital input, Suzhou's industrial strength has been further consolidated.

By 2025, Suzhou has formed three trillion-yuan-level industries: electronic information, equipment manufacturing, and new materials. The output value of high-tech industries above designated size accounts for 56.2% of the total output value of all industries above designated size. The total industrial output value is approaching 5 trillion yuan. Behind the 5 trillion yuan figure, Suzhou has formed a set of elements that are very difficult to replicate: A large number of enterprises, dense industrial parks, complete industrial chains, as well as the manufacturing workforce and supply chains accumulated over decades.

Unswervingly Adhere to the Strategy of Building the City Through Industry

Back to the original question: Suzhou's total industrial output value is already nearly 5 trillion yuan, how can it increase by another 1 trillion yuan in the next five years? I have carefully read the official meeting communique of Suzhou, and the answer can be summed up in two words: Innovation.

The goal of innovation is to make emerging industries more dynamic, and revitalize traditional industries, so as to further enhance the industrial strength and firmly uphold the strategy of taking industry as the foundation of urban development. This is exactly the same as the eight-word secret behind Shenzhen's success: "Build the city through industry, empower the city through science and technology".

Suzhou has made it clear that it will vigorously develop ten key emerging industries such as biomedicine, semiconductors, and embodied intelligent robots, and make forward-looking layouts for ten key future industries such as commercial aerospace and quantum technology. In the semiconductor sector, Suzhou has become one of the cities with the most complete integrated circuit industrial chain in China, forming a complete ecosystem covering equipment, materials, packaging and testing, and supporting facilities for chip manufacturing.

The AI era has driven an explosion in demand for computing power, and the entire semiconductor industrial chain has benefited. A large number of enterprises in Suzhou have seen both performance growth and valuation rise this year. Suzhou's Lianxu Instruments has become the highest-priced stock on the A-share market. In the first half of the year, 64 stocks in Suzhou saw their prices rise by more than 50%, accounting for nearly 30% of the total. Among them, 42 stocks doubled in price, mainly concentrated in hard-core technology innovation tracks such as optical communications, semiconductors, and high-end equipment. Looking at the national market, there were 365 A-share stocks that doubled in the first half of the year, which means that 1 out of every 9 A-share bull stocks that doubled in price comes from Suzhou.

As for revitalizing traditional industries, the method is to empower them with artificial intelligence. "AI +" has already been the most popular topic at present.

Here comes the key question: How to achieve innovation? There are two approaches: one is to increase capital investment, and the other is to introduce high-caliber talents.

In terms of capital investment, the Action Plan for Promoting New Industrialization in Suzhou (2026) released by Suzhou at the beginning of this year has clearly stated that it will strive to achieve a total industrial investment of 250 billion yuan, implement more than 1000 capital increase and expansion projects with a value of over 10 million yuan each, and add more than 2500 industrial projects with a value of over 100 million yuan each.

In addition, Suzhou has once again emphasized this time that in the next five years, it will promote the R&D investment intensity of the whole society to reach around 4.8%, and cumulatively cultivate more than 1500 national-level "little giant" enterprises specializing in sophisticated, unique and innovative sectors, and more than 25000 high-tech enterprises.

The reason why Shenzhen has a strong industry and ranks first in industrial scale is that it is willing to spend heavily on industrial R&D. In 2024, Shenzhen's R&D expenditure reached 245.307 billion yuan, up 9.7% year on year, and the R&D intensity (the ratio of R&D expenditure to GDP) reached 6.67%. Both figures rank first in Guangdong Province, and the R&D intensity ranks first across the country.

Suzhou is the same. In 2024, Suzhou's R&D expenditure reached 111.99 billion yuan, ranking third nationwide and first in Jiangsu Province, second only to Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai.

This figure reveals why Suzhou, as an ordinary prefecture-level city, has a GDP ranking 6th nationwide and industrial strength ranking 2nd nationwide.

In terms of talent introduction, Suzhou has emphasized: Optimize the full-chain talent recruitment, cultivation, retention and utilization mechanism, build a national high-level platform for attracting and gathering talents, implement the "Million New Talent Plan", amplify the brand effect of the International Elite Entrepreneurship Week, and introduce and cultivate more strategic scientists, leading scientific and technological talents, outstanding engineers, national craftsmen and high-skilled talents from all over the world.

If these measures are implemented earnestly, it will not be difficult for Suzhou's total industrial output value to reach the 6 trillion yuan mark in five years. Of course, whether the goal can be achieved or not, Suzhou is emphasizing with its actions and attitude that the essence of urban competition is industrial competition.

Even though its industrial strength has ranked second nationwide, with total industrial output value and total industrial operating revenue both approaching 5 trillion yuan, Suzhou still does not dare to slack off in any way.

Because Suzhou's urban status, financial capacity, employment structure and even social stability are almost all built on industry. For Suzhou, industry is the "unshakable cornerstone".

This article is from the WeChat official account "City Finance & Economics", author: Yu Fei, published with authorization from 36Kr.