Guangdong leads nation in GDP ranking
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-01-13 16:08

Beijing, China's capital, revised its gross domestic product (GDP) figure for 2004 immediately after the country published the result of the first national economic survey, the Beijing-based Economic Information Daily reported on Thursday.

Beijing's GDP for 2004, with a net increase of 41 percent on the basis of the revised figures, has made the municipality ranked 10th among China's 31 provincial-level regions from the 15th in the previous year, the newspaper said.

China announced the result of its first national economic survey last December, saying that the aggregate current price of the GDP in 2004 totaled 15.9878 trillion yuan (1.9 trillion U.S. dollars), 2.3 trillion yuan, or 16.8 percent, more than the original figure.

The change of provincial GDP ranking carries weight because local GDP has become an important indicator of the performance of officials in China.

According to the newspaper, the revised figures have increased the GDP gap between coastal Guangdong and Shandong Province, which was ranked first and second on the GDP list.

On the basis of original statistics, southern Guangdong Province's GDP was 55 billion yuan more than that of eastern Shandong, but according to the revised figures, the gap was expanded to 380 billion yuan.

The newspaper attributed this gap expansion to Guangdong's huge number of small and medium-sized enterprises, whose output is easier to be undervalued than large ones.

Governor of Guangdong Province Huang Huahua once said "the situation is severe" on basis of the shrinked gap, but now officials in Guangdong can sigh with a relief due to the revised GDP, the newspaper said.

Of the 177.7-billion-yuan GDP increase in Beijing, 154.4 billion or 86.9 percent is from the tertiary industry. The recently concluded economic survey showed the tertiary sector made up 67.8 percent of Beijing's 2004 GDP, 7.8 percentage points higher than the original ratio, the newspaper said.

The jump of Beijing's added value in the service industry has helped the city surpass Hubei, Fujian, Hunan, Heilongjiang and Anhui Province on the GDP list. The revised figures also made northwestern Shaanxi Province surpass Yunnnan, Tianjin and Jilin.

Of the 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China, five witnessed their GDP position go up and seven witnessed their ranking go down after the economic survey, according to the newspaper.

Although the survey increased China's GDP in general, some provinces including Henan, Sichuan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Hubei and Liaoning saw their GDP drop on the basis of the revised figures. The GDP of central China's Henan Province was cut by 26.1 billion yuan, and that of southwestern China's Sichuan Province was reduced 17.64 billion yuan.

"This helps local governments to throw away the big burden left by history," said Li Deshui, director of the National Bureau of Statistics.