2018 Annual Report on China’s Urban Competitiveness (Macao and Greater Bay Area) Press Conference

Press conference site

Sponsored by the Macao Foundation, the “2018 Annual Report on China’s Urban Competitiveness (Macao and Greater Bay Area) Press Conference” was held by the Institute for Sustainable Development of Macau University of Science and Technology at 501 in Block A of M.U.S.T. on June 25th, 2019.

The Annual Report on China’s Urban Competitiveness is led by Director Ni Pengfei of the Center for City and Competitiveness of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and jointly completed by research colleagues of the urban and regional economy field across the two straits and the Hong Kong and Macao region. The report is published annually and this year marks its 17th issue.

The report consists of the general economic competitiveness index, the sustainable competitiveness index, the livable competitiveness index and the business-friendly competitiveness index of cities. It analyzes 293 cities across the two straits and the Hong Kong and Macao region in terms of their general economic competitiveness, and 288 cities in terms of their livable competitiveness, sustainable competitiveness, and business-friendly competitiveness. The report reveals that the urbanization rate of China will continue to grow in the following years, and it is anticipated that by 2035, the urbanization rate of China will reach beyond 70%, and a greater number of population will shift from individual-based migration to household-based migration. It’s estimated that a urban layout, which features city clusters as the main entities complemented by coordinated growth of major-mid-small-sized cities and small towns, will come into being, and the spatial disperse of urban formations will drive the greater regions toward prosperity.

M.U.S.T. has been participating in the research and release of Macao’s Urban Competitiveness as part of the Annual Report on China’s Urban Competitiveness since 2012, and this release for the first time involves analysis of the urban competitiveness of the Greater Bay Area cities.

In 2018, Macao’s general economic competitiveness index is 0.155, ranked 14th nationally among the 293 cities at and beyond provincial levels, which is two places downward than in 2017 (12th). With regard to the two sub-indexes that contribute to the general economic competitiveness, the general efficiency competitiveness index is 0.268, ranked 3rd, one place down than 2017; the general increment competitiveness index is 0.028, ranked 276th nationally, three places up than 2017. Macao’s sustainable competitiveness index is 0.627, ranked 8th nationally, one place up than 2017. Among the six sub-indexes that contribute to the sustainable competitiveness, Macao proves significant strengths in universality, information technology, culture and knowledge urban competitiveness, which ranked 2nd, 3rd, 10th and 13th, respectively. In 2018, Macao’s business-friendly competitiveness index is 0.65, ranked 12th across the nation; in particular, Macao performs singularly well in physical hardware environment and local features, ranked 1st and 5th, respectively. Macao’s livable competitiveness index is 0.712, ranked 7th nationally, with exceptional strengths in ecological environment and economic environment, ranked 4th and 5th, respectively.

In terms of the four core cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen and Hong Kong occupy the top two places nationally in general economic competitiveness, Guangzhou 4th and Macao 14th. Hong Kong is ranked the 1st across the nation in livable competitiveness and business-friendly competitiveness, Shenzhen and Guangzhou are ranked 4th and 5th in business-friendly competitiveness, while Macao ranked 12th; Guangzhou, Macao and Shenzhen have all made into the top 10 in livable competitiveness. With respect to sustainable competitiveness, Hong Kong again ranked the 1st, Shenzhen and Guangzhou ranked 4th and 5th, and Macao 8th.

In terms of the 7 node cities, Dongguan and Foshan perform exceptionally well in economic competitiveness, ranked 10th and 12th respectively; relatively, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing are ranked backward in terms of economic competitiveness, 113th and 117th, respectively; with regard to business-friendliness, the node cities perform generally well; all ranked among the top except for Zhaoqing and Jiangmen; Zhuhai and Dongguan perform greatly in sustainable competitiveness, ranked 23rd and 27th, respectively; the remaining ones, except for Zhaoqing, are also ranked relatively highly.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is a city cluster. In accordance with the general development patterns of city clusters, to achieve efficacy of the entire city cluster, the Bay Area will need to be driven by a powerful engine, made up by the core cities and complemented by synergetic coordination of all the cluster components. Of the four core cities of the Greater Gay Area, Hong Kong serves as a hub for international finance, air transportation, trade and international airlines; Macao is positioned as a world center for tourism and leisure, a platform for trade cooperation and services between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, and as an exchange cooperation base that is based on the Chinese culture with diverse co-existent cultures, Guangzhou is a major national and comprehensive gateway city, while the most vibrant Shenzhen will endeavor to become an innovative, world-leading and modernized international city. Each core city exerts its own unique role, maximizing their own strengths while radiating towards and empowering the neighboring regions. In the meantime, Hong Kong-Shenzhen, Guangzhou-Foshan, and Macao-Zhuhai formulate the end-point collaborations, while other node cities fully exert their own strengths and reinforce interactions with the core cities. This in turn mobilizes and enables growth of the neighboring towns; jointly, the quality of development of the entire city cluster will be improved greatly.

In line with the three more established bay areas in the world, namely, the New York Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Tokyo Bay Area, which have all formulated their own unique development patterns in financial innovations and science and technology innovation drives, respectively by way of “finance + services”, “finance + science and technology”, and “finance + industry”, the continuous development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will also need to reply on innovations as the driving engine. Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, the three regions are singularly capable in science and technology development and transformation, and own a bevy of universities, research institutes, high-tech enterprises and state key laboratories that have significant impact nationally and even internationally. The four core cities in the Greater Bay Area rank generally among the top 10 nationally in intellectual competitiveness and information competitiveness, and thus have strong appeal in terms of innovation capacity and well-established foundation for developing international science and technology innovation centers.

Different from any other city clusters, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area grows in the context of “One Country Two Systems”, three independent tariff zones, and three different currency systems, and involves different social systems and varied legal systems. The cities in the area belong to different tariff zones, with room for improvement in terms of inter-connectivity and with barriers that prevent the productions and transactions from higher efficiency and better convenience. The area also relies heavily on outward-bound trade, and here there still exists excess in production capacity, imbalance in supply-demand structures, mismatches in all regards, and various other conflicts and problems; the intrinsic drive for economic growth is yet to be strengthened. Within the Greater Bay Area, despite its relatively higher urbanization rate, the cities here remain more scattered, leaving great gaps among the cities. Here, coexist cities ranked among top 10 in terms of competitiveness and cities ranked outside the top 100; synergy and accommodation among various cities remain weak; there still exists homogenous competitions and misplaced resources in certain regions and fields; complementary synergetic effectiveness is yet to be improved. Regional barriers in public policies, especially in social security and basic public services, remain unbroken. In addition, although there exist a great number of universities in the Greater Bay Area, there is insufficiency in educational resources; high housing prices deprive the area from attracting talents and repress innovation. As one of the core cities, Hong Kong lacks continuous stable support in its own economic growth, while Macao has a monotonic economic structure and is restricted in development resources. In summary, the role of the core engines is yet to be fulfilled and strengthened, and the market economy systems of the nine cities in the Pearl River Delta are in need of improvement.