Feicheng city, Shandong province. [Photo/ Feicheng.government.cn]

Forbes China, the Chinese-language edition of Forbes magazine, recently unveiled the 2014 list of China's best county-level cities. Tai'an's Feicheng city, Shandong province took the 20th place, the fourth among the seven counties in Shandong province that had made into the list.

The entry threshold for the Forbes list is for the regional GDP of a county-level city to reach 36 billion yuan or above, and assessment breaks down into such indices as talent, city scale, spending power, passenger transportation, cargo transportation, private economic activity, operating costs and innovation.

Since the beginning of 2014, Feicheng has rolled out a series of measures to upgrade its traditional industry, foster emerging industries, revitalize agriculture and boost the development of the services sector.

The city maintained a stable economic growth in 2014 while pushing ahead with industry restructuring and upgrading in a smoothly manner. From January to November, the local fiscal revenue reached 3.31 billion yuan ($532.91), up 10.41 percent year-on-year; and the prime operating revenue of the above-scale industry was projected at 124.5 billion yuan, up 4.8 percent year-on-year.

In 2014, the number of Feicheng's new projects and projects under construction, with an investment more than 100 million yuan each, totaled 134, 19 more than the previous year, up 16.5 percent. The number of above-scale enterprises in emerging industries reached 96.

Urbanization was also accelerating in 2014, reaching 55 percent. With 99 new-type countryside community service centers built, their services cover 99 percent of Feicheng's rural areas.