Beijing trails Shanghai coming second, with Guangdong in third, in terms of provincial economic competitiveness according to the newly released A Report of Overall Competitiveness of China's Provincial Economy 2006-2007.
 
The report was jointly put together and published by Management World magazine belonging to the State Council's Development Research Center, Fujian Normal University and the Social Science Academic Press. Its findings relied on a detailed evaluating system across three categories, namely eight B indexes, 22 C indexes and 184 D indexes.

Beijing ruled the roost on most B indexes, being among the best provinces or municipalities in terms of macro economy, industrial economy, finance, knowledge economy, sustainable development, development environment, governance and development level. Of particular pride to China's capital must be its first place on the knowledge economy index and coming second on industrial economy and finance.

However, Beijing's performance slipped on the governance index, ranking a lowly eleventh in China. Although the capital's government succeeded in narrowing the consumption gap between urban and rural areas, implementing standardized taxation and in bringing population growth to heel, the report highlighted Beijing's incompetence in several areas. Indexes where Beijing performed badly include fiscal expenditure on infrastructure investment, bolstering GDP growth and social investment while also falling short in terms of the impetus to transition from governmental consumption to civil consumption. 

According to the report, the improvement of provincial economic competitiveness requires a cooperative effort from industrialization, urbanization and marketing sectors of society. As the three major indicators of economic modernization, these driving forces must evolve in an interdependent, mutually beneficial and easy manner.  However, their respective developments are not balanced in most Chinese provinces. Beijing highlights this problem since the development of these three forces either top or bring up the rear of national rankings.

The report made further suggestions that Beijing aim to boost service consumption for tourism, culture, sports and entertainment. It also encouraged the capital to toe the line on the Olympic-driven Strategy in modernizing industry, improving ecological construction, building a reliable financial risk warning and refund system while also renewing its commitment to innovating government administration methods. 

(Beijing Evening News, translated by Li Shen for China.org.cn, March 15, 2007)