Presenting the comprehensive overview of urban economic and fiscal operations. The Urban Financial Index was released in Beijing.

On March 27, the “Shu Hui City, Wisdom for the Future—Joint Release and Exchange Conference of Urban Financial Index and Government Procurement Intelligent Consulting AI” was held in Beijing. The conference was initiated by the China Finance News Agency, hosted by Peking University’s School of Economics, and organized by the Peking University Institute of Urban Soft Power. At the meeting, two significant achievements, the “Urban Financial Index” and the “Government Procurement Intelligent Consulting AI Platform,” were officially released.

During the conference, a responsible person from the Peking University Institute of Urban Soft Power introduced the main content of the “China Urban Financial Index Report” (hereinafter referred to as “the Report”). The Report suggests that urban competition is shifting from “who is bigger” to “who is more stable, who is better, and who is more sustainable.” The City Finance Index aims to present the economic and fiscal operation status of Chinese cities through a scientific indicator system, providing references and support for local governance.

The index covers four dimensions: the quality of fiscal revenue, the effectiveness of fiscal expenditure, government debt risk, and overall economic vitality. It sets multiple detailed indicators, including budget execution, tax revenue share, efficiency of tax reduction and fee reduction, fiscal self-sufficiency rate, control of “three public” expenditures, investment in education, science and technology, and talent, social security and employment, health care, urban and rural community construction, transportation, ecological environment, cultural tourism development, debt ratio, debt repayment ratio, as well as economic growth, resident income, consumption, production, imports and exports, and investment, systematically depicting the comprehensive landscape of urban financial operations.

The City Finance Index categorizes cities into mega city groups, large city groups, Type I large city groups, Type II large city groups, and other city groups. The 2025 City Finance Index, based on data from 2025, was released this time. The Report shows that the mega city group overall presents characteristics of “high-level convergence and structural differentiation,” with mega city competition having shifted from scale competition to comprehensive competition in innovation capacity, fiscal allocation efficiency, and growth structure. Urban growth momentum has clearly differentiated: Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Chongqing show strong growth elasticity, while Shanghai and Beijing focus on stability, and Guangzhou faces certain transformation pressures.

The main characteristic of the large city group is “overall strong, internal differences.” It generally maintains strong resilience and serves as an important level for accommodating the overflow functions of mega cities and regional growth. Cities like Hangzhou, Xi’an, Jinan, Suzhou, and Zhengzhou have outstanding comprehensive performances, demonstrating strong industrial support and fiscal capacity. Some cities are collaboratively boosting consumption, industry, foreign trade, and innovation, while others have shortcomings in restoring domestic demand, fiscal self-sufficiency, and innovation transformation.

The Type I large city group is overall transitioning from factor-driven to efficiency-driven, with a significantly higher degree of differentiation than the large city group. Cities like Xiamen, Changzhou, Ningbo, Guiyang, and Hefei perform well, with coastal manufacturing cities and some provincial capitals in central and western regions exhibiting strong vitality, while some cities are relatively weak in consumption, fiscal balance, or innovation support. Overall, this group of cities has “growth but instability, potential but imbalance,” and enhancing domestic demand, strengthening fiscal resilience, and cultivating innovation momentum are key.

The Type II large city group shows the most significant differentiation, presenting a pattern of “prominent leaders, dense mid-tier, and pressured tails.” Cities like Wenzhou, Weifang, Yantai, Zibo, Kaifeng, and Nantong rank high, indicating that coastal manufacturing cities and some regional node cities possess strong comprehensive competitiveness. This group generally exhibits stronger industrial support than consumption support, with significant differences in fiscal self-sufficiency capacity and noticeable fluctuations in foreign trade and consumption. In the future, it should shift from relying on industrial support to balancing consumption, industrial upgrading, and fiscal quality.

The other city group is the largest and most complex, characterized by the coexistence of “distinctive breakthroughs” and “weak foundations.” Cities like Rizhao, Lhasa, Taizhou, Weihai, Sanmenxia, and Ordos stand out by leveraging resources, industries, or special expenditure efficiency, but more cities are still constrained by insufficient consumption, low fiscal self-sufficiency rates, and low industrial tiers. Overall, this group of cities is not weak as a whole but has outstanding single-item advantages with insufficient overall balance. In the future, the focus should be on strengthening characteristic industries, stabilizing fiscal foundations, and enhancing support for people’s livelihood and consumption.

In addition to releasing the City Finance Index, the conference also launched the Government Procurement Intelligent Consulting AI Platform. It was introduced that in government procurement activities, procurement units, centralized procurement agencies, procurement agency institutions, etc., need to carry out a large amount of preliminary preparation work, facing pain points such as the lack of scientific basis for procurement budgets, prominent compliance risks, insufficient efficiency and compliance in procurement document preparation, low work efficiency, weak professionalism in questioning responses, and omissions in expert reviews. The Government Procurement Intelligent Consulting AI Platform integrates “systems + technology + professional experience,” aiming to effectively help purchasers, procurement agency institutions, and related entities solve practical problems in government procurement, save fiscal funds, and improve procurement quality and efficiency.

Jiang Guohua, Vice Secretary of the Party Committee, Minister of the United Front Work Department, and Dean of Academic Affairs at Peking University, stated in his speech on behalf of Peking University that the City Finance Index and the Government Procurement Intelligent Consulting AI Platform released at this conference are important practices and achievements of Peking University in actively serving the national strategy, responding to the modernization requirements of urban governance, and promoting high-quality economic development. Yi Jianhua, Secretary of the Party Committee and President of the China Finance News Agency, expressed that currently, whether in urban development or government procurement, both are at a critical juncture of digital transformation and intelligent upgrading. The two achievements are interconnected, aiming to better serve fiscal work through digital and intelligent means.