The 2025 China County Economy High-Quality Development Research results and the 2025 CCID Top 100 Counties List were released at the 2025 County Economy Innovation and Development Forum on July 23. Three places from Hunan Province made the list. They are Changsha County, Liuyang County-level City, and Ningxiang County-level City, ranking 10th, 21st, and 25th respectively.
According to the research results, the top 100 counties have played a crucial role in driving economic growth. Over the past decade, the economic scale of these counties has surged from 7.4 trillion CNY in 2015 to 12.6 trillion CNY in 2023, nearly doubling their size. From 2015 to 2023, the GDP of the top 100 counties accounted for over 9% of the national GDP.
Meanwhile, the number of counties with economies exceeding 100 billion CNY continued to grow, reaching 62 in 2024. Among these, seven counties have emerged as "super-strong counties," due to their large economic aggregate, significant population base, robust fiscal revenue, high per capita income, optimized industrial structure, strong innovation capabilities, and great regional influence. Additionally, 21 counties with GDP surpassing 90 billion CNY are considered potential "100-billion-yuan counties." With over 100 counties now recording GDPs above 80 billion CNY, and almost 150 counties having GDPs exceeding 70 billion CNY, the level of competition among them has significantly intensified.
The research report indicates that "super-strong counties" represent an advanced form of county economic development. These counties possess both large economic aggregate and population, with key indicators reaching or approaching the levels of medium-sized prefecture-level cities or some provincial capitals, thereby meeting the criteria for Type II large cities. As of 2024, there are seven "super-strong counties", namely, Kunshan City, Jiangyin City, Zhangjiagang City, Jinjiang City, Cixi City, Changsha County, and Yiwu City.
According to the report, promoting high-quality development of counties requires balancing new industrialization, new urbanization, and comprehensive rural revitalization. Additionally, achieving this goal involves dealing with ten crucial relationships, including those between scale growth and structural optimization, technological innovation and industrial innovation, new industrialization and new urbanization, traditional industries and emerging industries, manufacturing and services, counties and urban areas, strengthening counties and enriching the people, investment attraction and fair competition, economic development and green ecology, and population loss and consumption expansion. These relationships are vital considerations in the process of county economic development.
This article is from the Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.
Translator: Kuang Zhenzhen
Chinese source: official WeChat account of the Hunan Provincial People's Government
