THE city of Hangzhou, home to e-commerce giant Alibaba, topped an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranking of Chinese cities with the greatest economic growth potential in the next few years.

All the cities in the top 10 are in eastern and southern China, except for the capital Beijing, which ranked sixth, after Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Zhuhai. Suzhou, Hefei, Nanjing and Ningbo rounded out the list.

Cities in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are best placed to benefit from China’s expected transition to a more technology-driven growth model during 2021-2025, the EIU said, with the cities of Hangzhou, Nanjing and Suzhou expected to further attract huge inflows of skilled workers.

In the government’s plan for 2021-2025, China will increase its annual research and development spending by over 7 percent.

The EIU also said smaller cities such as Zhuhai, close to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and Jiaxing, sandwiched between Shanghai and Hangzhou, will perform well economically due to positive spillover effects.

“With the government’s urbanization strategy focusing increasingly on creating city clusters, metropolitan areas, and industrial clusters, we also advise firms to pay close attention to broader, multi-city urban geographies,” said Yue Su, principal economist for China at the EIU.(SD-Agencies)