Growing cities are hollowing out provinces

THE GOVERNMENTS of Wuxi in Jiangsu province, and Changsha, capital of Hunan province, announced that their GDP last year exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($154 billion). Beijing News commented on Tuesday:

A GDP of 1 trillion yuan is the threshold for joining the big city club in China. So now there are 14 cities in the club, with the GDP of Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen more than 2 trillion yuan.

These 14 cities play important roles in regional and national development. Statistics show that together they account for nearly 30 percent of the national economy.