Important as Beijing is as China's capital and seat of government, it does not stand alone in terms of potential for development, researchers said yesterday.

The capital largely lags behind the country's economic hub of Shanghai when it comes to its capacity for urban development. Even the southern city of Shenzhen matches Beijing in this regard.

Niu Wenyuan, head of the 100-plus experts who prepared an in-depth urban development report for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), announced the findings yesterday.

The results were similar to a separate report from a team led by Ni Pengfei, of the Institute of Finance and Trade Economics, which is also under the CASS.

After analyzing the comprehensive competitiveness of 200 sample cities at or above the prefectural level, Ni's team found that China's top 10 competitive cities were Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Ningbo, Nanjing and Wenzhou.

The findings were exclusively released by Hunan Satellite TV Station yesterday.

A year ago, Beijing ranked first among 200 cities for its competitive power in terms of its workforce, and science and technology.

According to Niu's team, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Qingdao, Chengdu also rank in the top 10 of China's 50 biggest cities.

The Chinese mainland has 668 cities and more than 20,000 towns, where more than 39 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people live.

Shanghai leads in overall economic output, urban infrastructure, basic resources, level of industrialization and many other indicators. Some Beijing citizens concede that Shanghai is the nation's top city.

"I've heard a lot of comments from people all around the country about Shanghai's impressive economic performance and its potential," said Xiao Yu, an office worker in Beijing's Chaoyang District, after seeing the reports.

But Shanghai is not the clear-cut leader, according to the Niu report.

In terms of education capability, Beijing beats Shanghai because of its of renowned universities, research institutions, think tanks and international research and development centers.

Beijing has the most landline phones, mobile phones and Internet users. Shenzhen also beats Shanghai in this regard.

Shenzhen leads the pack when it comes to social security measures.

Niu announced that his team has drawn up a framework involving a trio of "metroplexes," seven economic belts and a number of central cities with common features to cope with urban China's sprawl.

The metroplexes are the groups of cities around Bohai Bay, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. They will serve as economic centers boosting the development of their surrounding areas.

The areas will contain more than half of China's population while accounting for 80 percent of the national economy and 90 percent of China's industrial output value. About 95 percent of the nation's trade volume will be produced there.

National People's Congress Standing Committee Vice Chairman Jiang Zhenghua said yesterday that China's current low degree of urbanization, in addition to an insufficient urban population and economic scale in many large cities, has limited its development and negatively affected its competitiveness.

(China Daily March 2, 2004)