Hong Kong fails to overtake Shenzhen as China’s most competitive city for fourth consecutive year
Think tank says better support for technology and innovation is needed for Hong Kong to climb rankings
Hong Kong was ranked behind Shenzhen as China’s second most competitive city for the fourth year in a row, as a top national think tank urged the former colony to better support innovation and attract new talent.
Professor Ni Pengfei, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ centre for city and competitiveness, on Friday also identified high living costs, social conflicts and the city’s reliance on financial industries as key weaknesses.
“Its economic structure is unbalanced, and problems in its systems caused inadequacies in technological innovation,” the Beijing-based scholar said.
Since the annual ranking was first published by the centre in 2003, Hong Kong was ranked China’s most competitive city for 12 years. But it was overtaken by Shenzhen in 2015, and has fallen behind its mainland neighbour as China’s second most competitive city since then.
The centre’s “overall economic competitiveness” ranking was calculated by gauging nearly 300 Chinese cities’ competitiveness in terms of their economic growth and efficiency in the past year.