2013 Top 50 Chinese Cities by Financial Strength List

　　In the 2013 Top 50 Chinese Cities by Financial Strength list, in addition to the 4 municipalities directly under the central government, Jiangsu Province has 9 cities, Shandong Province has 6 cities, Zhejiang Province has 5 cities, Guangdong Province has 4 cities, and Fujian Province has 3 cities.

　　Starting from 2014, our newspaper will successively launch the "Investment Times · China City Competitiveness Rankings". In this issue, we first focus on the financial strength of local governments. The local financial strength referred to here is the local public budget revenue. The so-called public budget revenue is the fiscal revenue mainly from taxes raised by the government by virtue of national political power and in the capacity of social manager, which is mainly used to ensure and improve people's livelihood, maintain the normal operation of government administrative functions, and ensure public safety.

　　Based on public data, our newspaper has compiled the "2013 Top 50 Chinese Cities by Financial Strength" ranking, and invited Han Fengqin, deputy director of the Basic Theory Research Office of the Research Institute for Fiscal Science, Ministry of Finance, and Zhang Wenchun, a researcher at the Institute of Finance and Taxation, Renmin University of China, to provide guidance.

　　According to Han Fengqin, the main contributing factors to a city's ranking in public budget revenue include: the city's administrative level and scale, the local economic development status corresponding to GDP, the choice of industrial structure, the fiscal and taxation system, and occasional factors of the year, etc.

　　According to statistics, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Hangzhou, and Chengdu rank in the top ten of the "2013 Top 50 Chinese Cities by Local Public Budget Revenue". However, experts say that cities of different administrative levels have different scales, which directly affects the absolute amount of fiscal revenue. The number of districts and counties under a city's jurisdiction varies; the more districts and counties, the larger the city scale, and the higher the fiscal revenue.

　　Where are the 50 Chinese cities with the strongest financial resources in 2013?

　　For example, Chongqing, ranked fifth on the list. According to data from the Chongqing Municipal Government website, it covers an area of 82,400 square kilometers and administers 38 districts and counties, making it one of the largest mega-cities in China in terms of administrative area, population, and number of administrative units. With such a city scale, its local public budget revenue (1.692 billion yuan in 2013) is naturally higher than that of Chengdu (898 billion yuan in 2013), which has a smaller administrative area.

　　The guiding experts believe that ranking cities by absolute fiscal revenue scale can indeed more accurately reflect local development, but the comparability of cities at different administrative levels should also be considered. For example, Wuhan, a sub-provincial city ranked 8th on the list, is not directly comparable with municipalities directly under the central government such as Beijing and Shanghai. The so-called "secret war between Chengdu and Chongqing" is inherently an unequal game.

　　To this end, we have compiled sub-rankings according to city level. In the top 20 provincial capitals ranking, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Shenyang, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Xi'an, and Jinan rank in the top ten. In the top 25 non-provincial capital cities ranking, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Dalian, Ningbo, Qingdao, Wuxi, Xiamen, Nantong, Ordos [-0.37% Capital Research Report], and Foshan are in the top ten.

　　In the top 50 ranking, the inclusion of some cities seems surprising. For example, Weifang City in Shandong Province. In 2013, Weifang's public budget revenue reached 38.39 billion yuan, ranking 33rd, surpassing provincial capitals such as Changchun and Guiyang. When it comes to national agriculture, Shandong is looked at; when it comes to Shandong agriculture, Weifang is looked at, but Weifang is also a strong industrial city. Of course, this also benefits from the more developed county-level economy of Weifang, which has long been a typical "small horse pulling a big cart" model.

　　There are many other cities like Weifang that have become important forces in China's economy. For example, Huai'an in Jiangsu is the fourth largest highland for Taiwanese investment in China after Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Kunshan, and has initially formed an industrial system dominated by three hundred-billion industries: special steel, electronic information, and new chemical materials. Another example is Jining in Shandong, which is a national-level engineering machinery industry base, one of the three major antibiotic production bases in the country, and a famous coal chemical industry base. It is reasonable for these new forces to enter the top 50.

　　From a regional distribution perspective, the representative cities of the three major urban agglomerations—the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, and Bohai Rim (Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou)—are still the leaders on this list. It is worth noting that Tianjin's GDP growth rate has been among the highest in the country in recent years, and its local public budget revenue has also ranked third on the list.

　　For a long time, Guangzhou has been regarded by Chinese people as the "third city" after Beijing and Shanghai. But in the past few years, Tianjin's rapid development has alerted Guangzhou's leaders, who said that Guangzhou's status as the "third largest city" may not be preserved, and the debate over whether Guangzhou or Tianjin is the "third city" has arisen. From this list, at least in terms of public budget revenue, Tianjin has firmly held the third position nationwide for several consecutive years.

　　On the list, the top ten cities are consistent with their GDP rankings, indicating that the ranking is positively correlated with GDP: the higher the GDP, the higher the fiscal revenue, and the higher the ranking. Fiscal revenue comes from factors such as the economic base and the distribution system. That is to say, industrial structure and tax system will affect a city's fiscal revenue.

　　From the geographical locations of the listed cities, most are eastern coastal and riverside cities with good economic development, such as Shanghai, Tianjin, and Suzhou. Some cities in the central and western regions with a good industrial foundation, such as Wuhan, Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Xi'an, Kunming, Urumqi, Nanchang, Guiyang, and Taiyuan, have also squeezed into the national top 50 list.

　　However, the financial strength of eastern cities is clearly superior to that of central and western cities. In the top 50 list, Jiangsu Province has 9 cities, Shandong Province has 6 cities, Zhejiang Province has 5 cities, Guangdong Province has 4 cities, and Fujian Province has 3 cities. Cities in these five provinces account for half of the list, while western provinces and regions such as Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Tibet, and Guangxi have no cities on the list.

　　Public budget revenue includes tax revenue (25% of value-added tax, 40% of personal income tax, as well as business tax, corporate income tax, etc.) and non-tax revenue. In the secondary industry, manufacturing and heavy chemical industries are subject to value-added tax, so local economies dominated by the secondary industry can bring more tax revenue, and strong industrial cities have higher fiscal revenue. For example, the prefecture-level city of Ordos has a coal industry, Tangshan has steel and other industries, and Daqing has an oil industry, so they all rank in the top 50.

　　But for these resource-based cities, there are many variables in 2014. Zhang Wenchun, a researcher at the Institute of Finance and Taxation, Renmin University of China, told reporters that the fiscal revenue of resource-based cities is directly related to local resource prices. For example, Ordos's fiscal revenue changes are linked to coal prices. In his view, "dominance of a single coal industry" is not only Ordos's own choice but also an objective need of national economic development. "These cities use resources to support national construction, and the state should give certain compensation to help them develop and transform."

　　Another example is Tangshan, whose pillar industry is steel. However, as the country intensifies efforts to control smog, Tangshan's "steel-cutting" action is imminent. The adjustment of industrial structure will inevitably impact Tangshan's GDP and public budget revenue.

　　Personal income tax is levied at the place of income source, so local economies with more floating population also have more tax revenue. For example, cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, which gather floating populations from other places, have GDP volumes that other cities cannot match, and their public budget revenues are correspondingly among the highest.

　　"Strictly speaking, in addition to the incomparability of city administrative levels, occasional factors of the year should also be excluded," Han Fengqin said. For example, the launch of a large project has a great impact on the fiscal factors of that year. If we want to observe the characteristics of a region's fiscal budget revenue over the long term, such non-normal factors should be excluded.

　　On this list, all cities are racing against progress, against time, against national policies, against resources, and even against government transitions, all hoping to turn a possibly temporary preferential policy into a permanent advantage. All cities have been endowed with the same ideal by the same national will, which is the mechanism source for the continued existence of regional competition. But behind these competitions, what have we lost?

　　In addition, according to the governing philosophy of the new government, public fiscal revenue will be more invested in livelihood projects. So how can we further optimize and integrate the existing expenditure structure and channel more public fiscal input to livelihood? How can we establish a fiscal democracy mechanism to control the government's purse strings? Should our local public budget ranking list have another ranking method? This is also a topic that needs consideration.