Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing in hot pursuit of No 1 Hong Kong

Hong Kong is still the most competitive city in the country in terms of composite strength but it is facing a challenge from Shanghai in terms of economic scale, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said Monday.

The city has topped the CASS competitiveness survey for the fifth consecutive year.

Hong Kong bested all of its peers in terms of economic scale, economic efficiency, technological level of industries and income level, the institution said in its annual survey "2010 Blue Paper on the Competitiveness of Chinese Cities" released Monday.

However, it warned that Shanghai is catching up with Hong Kong in terms of economic scale, with Hong Kong's lead on the score board narrowing from 0.26 to 0.09 points over the past five years.

"This is mainly due to the fact that Hong Kong's economic growth is far slower than that of Shanghai," said Dr Ni Pengfei, who released the blue paper on behalf of the CASS.

Meanwhile, the proportion of high-tech industries within the whole industrial sector is relatively low in Hong Kong, although the city manages to keep an edge over other cities in terms of technological level of industries, the report says.

Hong Kong has been relatively slow compared with Beijing in advancing the technological level of its industries over the last five years, the report notes.

Beijing is catching up with Hong Kong in the category of technological level of industries, the report says.

"To maintain its competitiveness, Hong Kong needs to build up its human resources and strengthen its technological development," Ni said.

Hong Kong needs to rethink and reposition itself in the arena of economic development, he suggested.

"Hong Kong has been strengthening its cooperation with the mainland on the economic front, in a bid to maintain its competitive edge. However, Hong Kong's economic growth is a bit slower than that of mainland cities as the city's economy is maturing," a government spokesperson said Monday in response to the CASS report.

"Hong Kong, facing global competition, must keep on strengthening its competitiveness by developing a knowledge-based economy that generates high value-added and more high-quality jobs," the spokesperson added.

Shenzhen was ranked the second most competitive city in the survey, followed by Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Gaoxiong, Dalian and Qingdao.

The survey covers nearly three hundred cities in China.

Other key findings of the survey include that the competitive edge of eastern coastal cities is declining while that of central and northern cities is rising; the top-10 most competitive cities are scattered throughout five big regions of the country, with three in the Pearl River Delta, one in the Yangtze River Delta, two from Taiwan, three in the Bohai rim region and one in northeastern China.

China Daily

(HK Edition 04/27/2010 page2)