Beijing is China’s only shining northern city as centre of economic gravity moves south

Beijing is the only city in the northern half of the country to be included in China’s top 10 cities in terms of economic size this year

China’s north-south divide is adding to an already complex regional imbalance between eastern coastal provinces and western regions

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Beijing is the only northern city to be included in China’s top 10 cities in terms of economic size this year. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:30pm, 2 Dec 2020Updated: 11:02pm, 2 Dec 2020

All Chinese cities north of the Yangtze River, except Beijing, are in relative decline as the centre of economic gravity in the world’s second biggest economy quickly shifts southward.

The capital is the only city in the north of the country included in China’s top 10 cities in terms of economic size this year, according to government data. Tianjin, one of China’s four municipalities under direct administration of the central government, lost its position in the list for the first time on record.

As China pivots towards “coordinated regional development” for 2021-25, private investors, banks and workforce talent are concentrating in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta in the south.

That is increasing China’s north-south divide and adding to an already complex regional imbalance between eastern coastal provinces and landlocked western regions.

Wang Yiming, former deputy director of the Development Research Centre of the State Council, said the economic disparity between north and south was becoming too large to ignore, and was overtaking the east-west gap as the prime regional imbalance.

The regional gap is likely to widen further in the next five years

Wang Yiming

“The regional gap is likely to widen further in the next five years,” he said last week at a forum at Renmin University of China.

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