More apt to rank cities according to growth quality rather than quantity

A LIST OF the top 30 city economies released by the market research company Askci Consulting has been published by many media outlets, catching people's attention. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

Shanghai ranked first on the list, as its gross domestic product in the first half of the year was 1.56 trillion yuan ($227 billion), followed by Beijing (1.41 trillion yuan) and Shenzhen (1.11 trillion yuan).

But although the list shows the economic scale of these cities, it does not reflect the quality of the city economies or the sustainability of their growth.