PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the world's second largest professional services network, has released its report on March 18, Wednesday, naming East China's Nanjing and Shenzhen and Guangzhou in South China as the top three "Cities of Opportunity," leading 20 other cities in the country.
The report was the result of evaluation conducted on 20 Chinese cities based on indicators that include innovation and intellectual capital, technology readiness, and traffic and city planning.
The Global Times reported that Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Nanjing maintained their ranks in the top three in the overall rankings, which remain unchanged from last year's result.
The three cities were also included in the category of top five cities with future development potential, with indicators that highlight sustainable development, technology readiness and the environment.
To have a balanced geographic distribution of ranking, five cities were added to the list this year, the report said. The five cities were Changchun, Harbin, Fuzhou, Chengdu and Lanzhou.
The report, however, said that development must be balanced and coordinated in all the regions of the country, as the result showed that cities near the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta fared better than cities in the western and northeastern provinces.
The report also noted that Nanning in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (which has close cultural and economic ties with ASEAN countries), Urumqi in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and Lanzhou in Northwest China's Gansu Province possess great potential for development that could make them become the pilot cities for China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative.
Wu Weijun, a senior partner at PwC, said hat the government is determined to provide cities in the different regions with opportunities for development as evident in China's initiatives such as "The One Belt, One Road," "Going West," and "Revitalizing Northeast China."