Shenzhen's market environment index ranked first in China last year, a report released by Tsinghua University’s Suzhou Environmental Innovation Research Institute and Chengdu University showed.
The two institutes jointly released China’s first index report about cities’ business competitiveness based on government affairs, market environment, social services and other indicators in 2021.
The top 10 cities in the report are Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Jinan, Hangzhou and Nanjing, according to their comprehensive competitiveness index scores.
Among the criteria, the first five indicators are government affairs environment, market environment, rule of law environment, social services and innovation and entrepreneurship environment index.
Beijing topped the list in the innovation and entrepreneurship environment index, while Shenzhen topped the market environment index, Guangzhou came first in terms of the rule of law environment index and Chengdu topped the social service and government affairs environment index.
The comprehensive competitiveness index shows that the first-tier cities, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, rank among the top four, which is consistent with their own economic strength ranking. Urban competitiveness index scores in the eastern region are general higher than those in other regions in the country.
The index calculation results show that the innovation environment is unbalanced between different regions, especially between the east and the west.
They also show the level of urban ecological environmental protection varied, the regional flow of capital was significantly different, and the distribution of human resources was still concentrated on the more developed areas in the east.