Nanjingers have reason to be proud today as their city has jumped up in the rankings of a well-respected index of the world’s greatest metropoles, while Asian cities are now close to occupying the bulk of the top positions therein.
Last Friday, 21 August, saw the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network release their Classification of Cities 2020, in which Nanjing is now ranked 87 among global cities, some seven places higher than in 2018.
Among Chinese cities, Nanjing now comes it at number nine, behind Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Taipei, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Tianjin, meaning Nanjing is number seven on the Chinese mainland. Nanjing also overtook Hangzhou, up one place from 2018.
Yet, this still belies the true picture. Of those seven, three are municipalities which more or less would be expected to rank higher. That Nanjing therefore comes in behind Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shenzhen is an excellent indicator of the city’s new-found status and her developing over the last decade.
Local media is reporting that Dai Liang, a researcher for GaWC from 2013 to 2018 and Associate Professor at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, said that some Chinese cities impacted by the epidemic will have seen a drop in their rankings. Wuhan for example has dropped from being a “Beta” city in 2018 to now be categorised as “Beta Minus”.
Nanjing on the other hand, maintains her status as a “Beta” city, having done a good job in stabilising foreign trade, investment and the industrial supply chain, thus maintaining the momentum of steady progress. Compared with the first release of the GaWC Classification of Cities in 2008, Nanjing’s position has risen from 215 to this year’s 87.
Nanjing is far from being the only Asian city ascending the rankings. According to Ben Derudder, GaWC Associate Director (City Network Analysis), the layout of the world’s cities has shifted to the Asia-Pacific region, especially as more and more Chinese cities are to be found on the list, heralding in the “China Century”, reports Nanjing Daily.
The GaWC Classification of Cities is a creation of the Geography Department at Loughborough University in the UK, intended to rank cities according to their relations with each other.
It is this focus on research into the external relations of world cities that is often neglected by world city researchers. As such, much of the effort goes into studying the internal structures of individual cities, together with comparative analyses of other similar conurbations.
