South-north coordination bigger than gap

The release of GDP data for Chinese cities in 2020 has once again put the focus on the "south-north gap", with most of the cities having GDP of more than 1 trillion yuan ($154.8 billion) being southern cities.

It is now becoming an annual ritual, with discussions about "southern economy over northern economy" or "southern cities dominating the economic sector" being the mainstream discourse after the release of local economic data.

The gap does exist, but there are multiple reasons for it, such as differences in industrial structure and comparative economic advantages. It is rather unnecessary to exaggerate the gap, let alone use words such as "dominate".

The majority of cities having GDP of over 1 trillion yuan are southern cities, but GDP is never the only index for measuring a city's economy. There are many more indexes such as high quality growth, the role innovation plays in growth, better urban and rural services, as well as people's happiness index. One should instead highlight the comparative advantages between southern and northern cities.

A new philosophy of domestic development is coordination among different regions, but coordination does not mean equal development rate for all. On the contrary, it means each region rendering its own efforts toward the common good and unleashing its best potential. They can have different industries that complement each other, different productive forces that help each other, as well as act as different links on the same supply chain.

Many economic regions have formed across the country. For example, in the southeastern coastal provinces there are the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta, two economic belts that are home to the manufacturing industry.

Old industrial bases are prospering in the northeastern provinces－Hebei province and Tianjin form a coordinated development circle with Beijing; Chengdu of Sichuan province and Chongqing tell a good economic tale in the southwest.

Each of the cities in these regions is playing a significant role in enabling the Chinese economy to flourish and laying a solid foundation for China's further economic development.