In 2020, the per capita GDP of Wuxi (无锡) City was ranked first in China and was rated as a livable city many times. Wuxi City in Jiangsu Province (江苏省) was once regarded as the star of China’s second-tier cities.
The successful economic transformation in the past decade, the counter-attack development of the chip industry, a good living environment, and a decent business atmosphere should attract more young people, but what factors make the reality quite opposite?
| Country | People’s Republic of China |
| Tier of City | Tier 3 |
| Municipal seat | Binhu District |
| Zip Code | 214000 |
| Area | 1,787 mi² |
| Province | Jiangsu |
| Population | 7.46 million |
After the seventh census, China’s urban population and economy are facing another round of re-ranking and reshuffle. In addition to paying attention to the first-tier cities, many media have focused on the Jiangsu city, Wuxi.
According to the results of the seventh census, the permanent resident population of Wuxi is 7.462 million, and the total GDP of Wuxi in 2020 is 1237.05 billion yuan. The result of dividing the two is 165,800 yuan, that is, the per capita GDP of Wuxi. If this figure is taken out of the resource-based city of Karamay (180,900 yuan), Wuxi has ranked first in the country.
According to this ranking, Wuxi not only surpasses the super first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai (上海), and Shenzhen (深圳) but also compares Suzhou (苏州).
In fact, it is no accident that Wuxi ranks first in per capita GDP. In the national per capita GDP ranking in 2019, Wuxi has already ranked third with a per capita GDP of 180.000.
Generally speaking, the total GDP reflects the economic strength of a region, while the per capita GDP can better measure the people’s living standard of a region.
Of course, there is another crown worthy of attention for Wuxi, which is the ranking of China’s urban competitiveness sponsored by the Chinese Academy of social sciences. Wuxi was selected as the top 10 livable cities three consecutive times from 2017 to 2019.
As a second-tier city in southern Jiangsu, throughout the country, Wuxi is obviously no better than Suzhou next door, and its economic aggregate is slightly inferior to that of Ningbo, a sub-central city in the Yangtze River Delta.
So what exactly are the advantages of Wuxi? What development dilemma does Wuxi, which ranks first in per capita GDP, face?
Best things in Wuxi city
When it comes to Wuxi, here are the first impressions for most people.
- Several 5A scenic spots: Lingshan Giant Buddha, Nianhuawan town, Yuantouzhu. The urban environment is good and green. Developed commerce is also a
Tracing back to history, in addition to the scenery of Taihu Lake, Wuxi City is also profoundly an industrial city. According to the statistics of 1936, Wuxi had 315 factories and a total capital of 14.07 million yuan, which could rank fifth among Chinese cities at that time.
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, large factories such as Wuxi Diesel Engine Factory, Wuxi oil pump Nozzle Factory (now Weifu Group Co., Ltd.), and Wuxi compressor factory were born in Wuxi, continuing the development of industrial cities. Even in 2016, Wuxi’s secondary industry accounted for more than 41%.
The traditional industrial sector began to face the pressure of transformation after 2010, which is also a challenge for the development of a city. In 2014, Wuxi also experienced a difficult situation in which GDP growth ranked at the bottom among the 13 districts and cities in Jiangsu.
By 2017, Wuxi’s industrial sector had completed the transformation from traditional manufacturing industries such as textile, chemical industry, and equipment manufacturing to emerging advantageous manufacturing industries such as automobile, equipment, and computer. Behind this huge transformation, it is obvious that the county economy and private economy are playing a key role.
Jiangyin (江阴) city and Wuxi city
A detailed study of the composition of the total economic volume of Wuxi will find that 50% comes from Jiangyin and Yixing, which are two regions that continue to occupy the top ten list of China’s county economy. The total economic volume of Jiangyin alone can be comparable to that of many prefecture-level cities.
Jiangyin’s GDP in 2020 was 411.3 billion yuan, accounting for not only one-third of the total economy of Wuxi but also the second-largest among all county-level cities in China, second only to Kunshan City in Suzhou. Other private enterprises in Wuxi still have impressive growth points in recent years, except for the Huaxi village, which has been deeply involved in debt turmoil.
Listed Companies in Wuxi
In 2018, Hailan group (海澜之家集团) became the first enterprise in Wuxi with a revenue of more than 100 billion. By 2020, there will be 166 listed companies in Wuxi, and the number and market value of listed companies once ranked first in Jiangsu Province.
In 2020, the total market value of listed companies in Wuxi city will be 1.2 trillion yuan, becoming the first city in Jiangsu Province where the total market value of A-share listed companies exceeds the trillion yuan and outperforms GDP. Among them, 12 enterprises were shortlisted as the top 500 enterprises in China.
In terms of subdivided fields, the pharmaceutical, biological, and electronic industries account for almost half of the total market value of Wuxi A-share listed companies. YaoMing’s (药明制药) Yaoming biology and Yaoming Kant are also among the top two listed companies in Jiangsu Province.
Among all the transformation industrial projects, the most commendable is obviously the semiconductor industry in Wuxi. Due to the context of international trade friction, it is so obvious that the semiconductor industry plays a key role in the whole electronic industry, and Wuxi has laid out supporting policies since 2018.
In addition to financial support, Wuxi also pays attention to the integrated development of the industry. In 2018, CLP Haikang signed an agreement with the Wuxi Municipal government to establish the second headquarters base of CLP Haikang in Wuxi.
One of the contents of the agreement stipulates that production and manufacturing enterprises should be supported to give priority to purchasing chip products of Wuxi local design enterprises, and appropriate subsidies should be given to those whose purchase amount reaches a certain standard.
Large, medium, and small chip enterprises have the opportunity, which may be the reason that a large number of semiconductor enterprises choose Wuxi.
Why Wuxi city is still struggling?
The result of urban economic development must be the siphoning effect on the population. According to the data of the seventh national census, compared with the sixth national census in 2010, the permanent population of Wuxi has a net increase of 1,087,700 people, an increase of 17.06%.
This growth rate is amazing for Wuxi, which has ranked fifth in Jiangsu Province for a long time, second only to Suzhou, which has a population of more than 10 million.
The substantial growth of the population is followed by a series of problems such as house prices, education, and so on.
An online article joked that house prices in Wuxi had risen third in the world. It is said that in 2017, Wuxi ranked third in the global house price increase with an increase of 22.9%, and China’s house price increase ranked first! Wages did not rise, but house prices rose first, which is complained about by many people about the real estate market in Wuxi in recent years.
Undeniably it seems not surprising that the population has increased by more than 1 million in the past decade, with an increase of more than 20%. But other data is thought-provoking. Between 2010 and 2020, Wuxi’s registered population increased by only 420,000. In these 10 years, the registered population of Suzhou alone has increased by 1.06 million, and that of Nanjing has also increased by 640,000.
It can be seen that the problem in Wuxi is that the proportion of the resident population transformed into the registered population is low. The reasonable guess is that these people did not finally choose to stay in Wuxi. They gave up the opportunity to settle down and even turned Wuxi into a springboard to other first-tier cities.
Compared with the hot real estate market in 2020, a series of purchase restriction measures announced by Suzhou, the price of 18,000 ~ 24,000 yuan / m2 in Wuxi seems not to be an outrageous house price, which can also indirectly confirm this speculation.
In fact, the house price in Wuxi is not as strong as expected. In July this year, Wuxi was the first pilot city of second-hand housing guide price in Jiangsu Province. The announced trading volume of second-hand houses in the current month immediately decreased by 26.91% month over month, and the unit price also fell by 0.3%.
The Education of Wuxi city
There is another dimension that can explain the development degree of a city, and that is education. As we all know, Jiangsu, where Wuxi is located, is a big province of education in China.
According to Sohu city’s “changes in the number of primary school students in key cities in China in recent five years”, the number of primary school students in Wuxi in 2020 was 423,000, an increase of 26% in recent five years.
This increase is almost the same as that of Shenyang, with a population of 9.06 million, and is slightly higher than that of Nantong, Xiamen, and other eastern cities, ranking at the forefront of the country as a whole.
However, another data comparison has opened the gap between Wuxi and other cities, that is, the number of colleges and universities. At present, Wuxi has only 13 colleges and universities, which is only higher than Nantong and Dongguan among the 30 key cities in China.
If the number of college students is counted, it is only 124,000, only more than 110,000 in Shenzhen. Considering that Shenzhen is a city with a history of only 40 years, and Shenzhen has vigorously developed cooperative school running and graduate education in recent years, several high-level universities such as South University of science and technology have sprung up.
By 2025, the number of colleges and universities in Shenzhen is expected to reach 20, and the number of students studying in Shenzhen will steadily double. At that time, Wuxi’s situation will be even harsher.
In addition to various historical reasons, there are also some reasons that are overlooked.
First, Jiangnan University has limited radiation effects. Although it also is known as the top university in China, Jiangnan University has been staggering in recent years, except for the traditional food chemical industry continuing to be among the best, it has not been struggling in other professional fields.
Second, it didn’t catch the free ride of cooperative education. In recent years, relying on policies and cooperation between foreign universities and domestic first-class universities, Suzhou has launched two Chinese foreign cooperative universities with all brand influence, Xijiao Liverpool and Kunshan Duke.
The end of the North American College of Jiangnan University in 2020 not only marks the embarrassing end of the cooperative school running in Wuxi city but also further highlights the city’s weakness in the overall construction of colleges and universities.
Because higher education is obviously weaker than other second-tier cities. After reaching the age of 18, many young people in Wuxi have to turn to Jiangsu or other cities in China to study at universities, or even go abroad for development. The probability of returning to Wuxi to work after graduation will be greatly reduced.
At the same time, due to the lack of colleges and universities, the R & D opportunities of local government and enterprises will be greatly diminished, and the cost of retaining employees will be increased accordingly.
How about the future of Wuxi city
By 2020, Wuxi announced that there were 1.356 million people over the age of 60 in Wuxi, accounting for 26.9%, which is higher than 26.02% in Suzhou. It is close to Nantong with the highest degree of aging. Due to the prominent livable nature of the urban environment and the leisurely pace of life, it seems that Wuxi is a good place for the elderly.
On the other hand, the average salary in Wuxi is relatively low compared with that in first-tier cities, which is certainly unfriendly to young people. According to statistics, the average salary of employees in Wuxi in 2021 is 7,200 yuan, ranking third in Jiangsu Province, which is obviously much lower compared with other cities in the Yangtze River Delta.
The urban development of Wuxi is inseparable from the overall development logic of the whole Yangtze River Delta urban circle. Wuxi belongs to the Yangtze River Delta city circle, 123 kilometers away from Shanghai. In terms of geographical location, the economic and cultural radiation of Shanghai must be developed in the order of distance, that is, first Suzhou, then Wuxi and Changzhou.
Although Wuxi has the weakness of low population base, lagging development of higher education, and insufficient attraction to young people. However, this does not affect Wuxi to become a livable city. Even in the Internet age, convenient transportation, a beautiful environment, and a developed economy are the reasons for many people to choose Wuxi, which also gives Wuxi the potential to become a net red city.
