Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing top PwC cities survey on development

South China's Shenzhen and Guangzhou and East China's Nanjing are the top three "Cities of Opportunity" in China, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) China said in a report released on Wednesday.

The report, jointly released by the PwC and China Development Research Foundation, examined 20 Chinese cities based on indicators such as intellectual capital and innovation, technology readiness and traffic and city planning.

Five cities - Changchun, Harbin, Fuzhou, Chengdu and Lanzhou - were added to this year's ranking to reflect a relatively balanced geographic distribution, the report said.

Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Nanjing ranked in the top three in the overall rankings, unchanged from last year's result. They were also in the top five in indicators highlighting cities' future development potential such as technology readiness, sustainable development and the environment, according to the report.

However, the report said China faces challenges fostering balanced and coordinated development across regions, as cities in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta generally ranked higher than cities in northeastern and western interior provinces.

The report also said Nanning in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region with close cultural and economic ties with ASEAN countries, Urumqi in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Lanzhou in Northwest China's Gansu Province also enjoy great development potential as strategically important cities in implementing China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative.

The implementation of strategies like "Going West," "Revitalizing Northeast China" and "One Belt, One Road" have showed the Chinese government's determination and provided development opportunities for cities in these regions, Wu Weijun, a senior partner at PwC in Beijing, told a media briefing on the release of the report.