In the Northwest, there is no dispute about who is the first city, but there are different accounts of who is the second city.
At present, the cities that have the strength to compete for the second city in the northwest include Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia, and Yulin, the second largest economic city in Shaanxi.
In 2000, the GDP difference between Lanzhou and Xi'an was only more than 30 billion yuan, and the difference is now more than 850 billion yuan.
Not long ago, Lanzhou City held a strong provincial capital conference. According to Lanzhou's timetable, by 2027, the province's total economic output will account for more than 35%, and the permanent population will exceed 5 million.
If the provincial capital is strong, the whole province will be strong. Last year, Gansu also launched a strong provincial capital action, and at that time, it was said that the controversial "second city in the northwest" was finally about to wake up.
However, the economic data of 2023 shows that the growth rate of Lanzhou, which is strategically supported by a strong provincial capital, is only 44%, not only lower than the average level of Gansu Province, but also lower than most of the provincial capitals in the country, the economic volume was overtaken by the old rival Hohhot again.
At this time, the provincial capital will be strengthened, and the eagerness of Gansu and Lanzhou is self-evident. Digging deep into the reason for Lanzhou's stall, the core is the industrial economy dragged down by the low-level operation. The conference of Lanzhou strong provincial capital emphasized that it is necessary to "make innovation, a key variable, the largest increment of strong provincial capital".
In the face of the pressure of steady growth, can Lanzhou, an old industrial city with a heavy industry and a more traditional industry, survive the pain of transformation as it wishes?
Translocation
Horizontally comparing the 27 provincial capitals in the country, except for Nanchang and Urumqi, which have not yet released data, Lanzhou's economic growth rate in 2023 will be in the second half, only higher than Nanning, Taiyuan, Kunming and Harbin, which also leads to Lanzhou's economic volume being overtaken by Hohhot, which is closely behind.
As one of the recognized "weak provincial capitals", Hohhot's economic growth rate has fallen from double digits in 2013 to the bottom, and has underperformed the country for many years.
At the beginning of 2023, Inner Mongolia issued opinions on supporting the high-quality development of Hohhot, calling for a "strong capital", and finally Hohhot took the lead among provincial capitals with an economic growth rate of 10%, and the total GDP surpassed Lanzhou again after five years.
In fact, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the term "strong provincial capital" frequently appeared in the development strategy of provincial capitals in the central and western regions, and cities such as Changsha and Zhengzhou also ushered in the outlet.
Some experts and scholars believe that for the central and western provinces, which are naturally inferior in resources and policies compared with the east, it is a helpless move and not many ways out to use the strategy of strengthening the provincial capital to build a "most capable city" with limited resources to avoid being siphoned.
For Lanzhou's economic stall in 2023, Zhang Baotong, a researcher at the Shaanxi Academy of Social Sciences, believes that Gansu's idea of implementing the strategy of strengthening the provincial capital is correct, and the problem lies in Lanzhou itself.
The comparative advantage of western cities is resources, and if they have resources, they will develop rapidly. Zhang Baotong mentioned that the northwest cities of Yulin, Ordos and Baotou, which occupy energy resources, have experienced faster economic growth than the provincial capitals of their respective provinces in recent years.
Lanzhou, on the contrary, its industrial structure has always been a state-owned heavy chemical industry structure based on resource support, with the transfer of China's petrochemical industry to the coast, Lanzhou gathered Lanlian, Lanhua and other petrochemical enterprises resource advantages to come to naught.
As a typical representative of many cities in the west, Lanzhou's frustration is not an exception, but its decline is staggering. Compared with Xi'an, which is also located in the northwest region, the GDP growth rate during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period reached 37628.2 billion yuan, while Lanzhou only grew by 6227.7 billion yuan, Xi'an's increment is equivalent to rebuilding a "Lanzhou".
At the beginning of the reform and opening up, Lanzhou's total economic output ranked 18th in the country, and by 2022, it will fall to 97th, and it is already in the last rank of the top 100 cities in the country.
Gansu must be strong, and Lanzhou, as the provincial capital, must be strong. The conference of Lanzhou City to strengthen the provincial capital pointed out that at present, Lanzhou must seize the opportunity and work hard to promote the old city to rejuvenate and the old industrial base to develop new development momentum to achieve new and greater results.
According to the timetable set by Gansu and Lanzhou, by 2027, Lanzhou's total economic output will account for more than 35% of the province's total economy, with a permanent population of more than 5 million.
Reinforcement
Generally speaking, 30% is the baseline for economic primacy, and more than 30% is considered a sign of a strong provincial capital.
In 2018, Lanzhou's economy ranked first with 3314%, the highest in the past 15 years, is still far from the target of 35% of strong provincial capitals. What's more serious is that Lanzhou has not been able to stop the decline in the first degree, and after falling below the 30% critical line in 2022, it will decline again in 2023, from 2985% fell further to 2939%。
In terms of population, the main population data of the province in 2023 previously reported by the Gansu Provincial Bureau of Statistics shows that at the end of 2023, the permanent population of the province will be 2465480,000 people. Among them, the permanent population of Lanzhou, the provincial capital, is 442510,000 people. Considering the slowdown in Lanzhou's population growth and the negative growth of the national population, it is difficult to increase to 5 million people.
Economic and population growth depends on industry in the final analysis. Previously, Gansu had self-analyzed, the whole province is facing the "challenge of economic transformation and upgrading", "as a resource-based province and an old industrial base dominated by heavy chemical industry, the situation of economic restructuring is very urgent". The pressure on Lanzhou, the provincial capital, is even more obvious.
In 2022, the added value of Lanzhou's secondary industry, the added value of industries above designated size, and the investment in fixed assets all showed negative growth. By 2023, the first two data mentioned above can stop falling, and the growth rates are. 2%, far lower than the average level of Gansu Province; Investment in fixed assets showed an intensifying trend of negative growth (-7.).4%）。
Compared to other northwestern provincial capitals, Lanzhou is 1120The added value of the secondary industry of 600 million yuan is more than 18 billion yuan behind Yinchuan and nearly 22 billion yuan in Hohhot.
Local experts in Lanzhou pointed out that compared with the whole country, Lanzhou's comprehensive scientific and technological strength has gradually improved, the share of industry has gradually decreased, and the process of new industrialization has obviously lagged behind. ”
In Zhang Baotong's view, while Lanzhou, the "leading brother", is disappointed, Qingyang and other resource-based cities in Gansu have a good development momentum, and on the whole, Gansu will be 6The economic growth rate of 4% is among the highest among the provinces in the country.
Zhang Baotong believes that Lanzhou is still a resource allocation center in the traditional sense, rather than a factor gathering and innovation center, which is one of the fundamental problems of Lanzhou's development. He suggested that Lanzhou should change its thinking and give full play to the advantages of the provincial capital's science and technology, education, finance and logistics center to support other cities in the province, so as to drive the better development of the province.
variables
This year is the year of Lanzhou's comprehensive efforts to promote the action of strengthening the provincial capital, "if you don't advance, you will retreat, and if you are slow, you will retreat." The conference of Lanzhou strong provincial capital emphasized that it is necessary to "make innovation, a key variable, the largest increment of strong provincial capital". ”
Colleges and universities are the intersection of science and technology as the first productive force, talent as the first resource, and innovation as the first driving force. In the context of innovation-driven development, many places are planning to build new universities, and Lanzhou, with a permanent population of more than 4 million, has more than 1,200 scientific research institutes represented by the "one academy and three institutes" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and 34 colleges and universities represented by Lanzhou University, with considerable resources.
However, resource advantages and innovation advantages cannot be completely equated. Taking talent training as an example, in 2020, Yan Chunhua, president of Lanzhou University, said frankly in an interview with "Outlook" Newsweekly: Affected by economic and regional factors, brain drain has become a prominent problem ...... Lanzhou University in the years from the 90s of the last century to the beginning of the new century
Almost at the same time, the relevant person in charge of Lanzhou University of Technology also mentioned the phenomenon of brain drain in Lanzhou's local universities, and said, "Most of them flow to more economically developed areas such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and eastern provinces and regions, and most of them are high-level talents who have grown up in the western region." ”
In this regard, "Guangming**" has commented that the need for social and economic development has always been the fundamental reason for promoting the general flow of talents, "it is not the lack of talent that leads to the backwardness of the development of a place, on the contrary, it is precisely because of the backwardness of the economic and social development of a place that curbs the demand for talents." ”
In other words, in order to change the situation of difficulty in attracting and retaining people, in addition to the efforts of colleges and universities themselves, the key lies in the development of cities.
At present, Lanzhou has issued policies and measures such as "Several Measures to Support Scientific and Technological Innovation in Lanzhou City" and "Implementation Plan for Lanzhou City to Implement Strong Science and Technology Action (2023-2027)" to promote the deep integration of innovation chain, industrial chain, capital chain and talent chain.
At the same time, we will continue to iteratively upgrade the talent policy, implement the multiplication plan for college students to stay in Lanzhou, set up the "Youth Science and Technology Talent Innovation Project", cover and support 111 key enterprises in the city with housing subsidies for talent introduction, and put forward 9 measures to strengthen the continuous training of introduced talents to attract young talents to work and start businesses in Lanzhou.
In terms of innovation ability, the eastern part of China is stronger than the west, the south is better than the north, and the northwest region is the weakest. Zhang Baotong said frankly that it is difficult for northwest cities to catch up with other regions by innovation alone, and they must also adapt measures to local conditions, give full play to their own geographical advantages, and actively participate in the construction of the "Belt and Road" to attract investment and talents.
At the Lanzhou City Strong Provincial Capital Conference, the investment amount was 659A number of major industrial projects of 7.8 billion yuan have been signed in a centralized manner, covering advanced manufacturing, modern service industry, headquarters economy, digital economy and other industrial fields, cultivating new growth points for Lanzhou.