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Suzhou races ahead in industry growth

Suzhou Bureau of Commerce | Updated:2022-01-11 11:01

While China has laid more emphasis on high-quality development in the real economy, Suzhou in Jiangsu province has come up with the right path to achieve that goal, which was demonstrated by its outstanding industrial output figures last year.

The city's government announced in late December that its industrial output made by companies with an annual turnover of at least 20 million yuan ($3.14 million) each had topped 4 trillion yuan in 2021, up 15 percent year-on-year. That number beat the 3.7 trillion yuan record set by Shenzhen in 2020, and, based on the 2020 data, it was also twice the figure of Guangzhou and six times that of Xi'an.

The reasons for the skyrocketing numbers are worth a closer look. Information technology, equipment manufacturing, biomedicine and advanced materials accounted for 3.8 trillion yuan of Suzhou's total industrial output of 4 trillion yuan last year.

Suzhou's annual industrial growth rate reached 20.5 percent in the first half of 2021, compared with 15.2 percent in Shanghai and 4.8 percent in Shenzhen during that period.

As of the end of 2021, Suzhou was home to 111,555 high-tech innovative companies recognized by the Ministry of Science and Technology. In a report released on Dec 24 by market research firm CCID Consulting, the city ranked first among all prefecture-level cities in China in terms of development of the digital economy.

Cao Lubao, Party secretary of Suzhou, said that innovation should serve as the engine of the city's economic growth. More projects and companies should be attracted to the city to build more industrial clusters, he said.