15 cities named as new first-tier cities in 2024: report

Fifteen Chinese cities were named as new first-tier cities in 2024, news portal yicai.com reported on Thursday.

The evaluation was based on five primary criteria: concentration degree of commercial resources, urban transport capacity, vitality of urban population, new economic competitiveness and future potential, it also has 16 secondary criteria, and 61 third-level criteria, to assess the overall attractiveness of 337 cities at prefecture-level or above.

The 15 new first-tier cities in 2024 in terms of their degree of attractiveness are: Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Suzhou, Wuhan, Xi'an, Nanjing, Changsha, Tianjin, Zhengzhou, Dongguan, Wuxi, Ningbo, Qingdao, and Hefei.

According to the report, the competition between new first-tier and second-tier cities remains stiff this year. Wuxi in East China's Jiangsu province jumped up 6 places to number 12 among the new first-tier cities, making it back on the list of new first-tier cities.

The attraction of cities has fundamentally changed. For Gen Z - those born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s - profit is no longer the only indicator that makes them choose a city for development, the report showed.