Rate set to slow, but focus now more on quality: analysts
GDP growth in major cities in the Chinese mainland remained relatively fast in 2015, but analysts said Monday that this growth will slow down this year as local governments focus more on reforms and restructuring plans, rather than just boosting GDP.
Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, has become the 10th Chinese city to have an annual GDP exceeding 1 trillion yuan ($152 billion), according to media reports on Monday.
The government of Hangzhou announced that the city's GDP reached over 1 trillion yuan in 2015, up 10.2 percent from a year earlier, according to a press release posted on the website of the Hangzhou Statistics Department on Monday.
Shanghai's GDP grew at a slower pace but remained the largest among all cities in the Chinese mainland in 2015, according to a report by domestic news portal Monday. Shanghai's GDP reached nearly 2.5 trillion yuan and grew 6.9 percent from a year earlier, the Shanghai Municipal Government announced on Wednesday.
Shanghai was followed by Beijing, with the capital's GDP reaching 2.3 trillion yuan in 2015, also up 6.9 percent, according to official data released on Thursday.
The other cities that recorded GDP of over 1 trillion yuan in 2015 include Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province, North China's Tianjin, Southwest China's Chongqing, and Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province, according to the report on .
Above national average
With the exception of Shanghai and Beijing, all the other eight cities saw GDP growth that was faster than the national average, with Chongqing seeing the fastest year-on-year growth rate of 11 percent in 2015, said.
The national GDP in 2015 grew by 6.9 percent from a year earlier, reaching 67.67 trillion yuan, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on January 19. Last year's growth rate was the slowest in a quarter of a century, according to media reports.
Most major cities in China also saw faster GDP growth than the national rate in 2015, with cities such as Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan Province and Zhengzhou, capital of Central China's Henan Province, growing by more than 9 percent in the year, according to the report.
However, cities such as Dalian and Shenyang in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, which rely on heavy industries, saw slower GDP growth. Dalian's GDP grew 3.8 percent year-on-year and Shenyang's GDP grew 3.5 percent year-on-year, well below the national growth rate, the report said.
Slower in 2016
Tian Yun, director of the research center of the China Society of Macroeconomics, said that ongoing challenges such as a supply glut and weak demand will remain this year for cities in Northwest and East China, where economic growth relies on heavy industries and manufacturing.
Meanwhile, cities in Central and Southwest China, where the economy is still catching up with more developed regions, will probably maintain faster growth rates than other parts of the country, but they might still face slowdowns compared to 2015 given the overall economic climate, Tian told the Global Times Monday.
"The national GDP is likely to slow further to somewhere between 6.5 percent and 6.7 percent this year," said Wang Jun, deputy director of the Department of Information at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.
Wang told the Global Times on Monday that major cities' GDP growth will also slow in 2016, but the slowdown won't be "too significant."
Focus on sustainable growth
Analysts said more and more local governments are now putting greater emphasis on implementing reforms and optimizing economic structures to pursue more sustainable growth paths.
"Quantity of economic growth is not the only goal anymore," said Tian. "Quality is becoming increasingly important."
He said a sustainable growth path that is focused on improving people's lives and protecting the environment is what local governments need to pursue, and they are realizing that now.
Wang also noted that local governments will follow the central government's call to focus more on the sustainability of the economy.
