(File photo)

On December 3, the Academy of Greater Bay Area Studies published the “2018 China Cities Business Environment Assessment Report” (hereinafter referred to as the “Report”). A total of 35 large and medium-sized cities’ business environment were assessed. Changsha has improved its business environment over the past year, making its ranking of 9, followed by Wuhan. The top five were Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Chongqing. Chengdu, Nanjing, and Hangzhou ranked 6th, 7th, and 8th respectively.

The Report stated that Changsha’s business environment leaps to the 9th place in China, due to its good ranking on soft environment and business cost indexes.

Changsha’s soft environment ranking leaped to second from 31st last year. Soft environment index includes the number of market entities, amount of investment, and population growth. The number of market entities is divided into the number of market entities per thousand people and the number of new market entities per thousand people.

At the end of 2017, Changsha has 103 market entities per thousand people, close to Hangzhou, and more than Beijing and Shanghai (less than 100 per thousand people). In 2017, the number of new market entities per thousand people in Changsha was 23, ranking 8th in the country, and higher than Shanghai (nearly 15) and Beijing (nearly 10).

In terms of population growth, Changsha’s permanent resident population grew by 3.57%, only second to Shenzhen in the country, and ahead of cities such as Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Xiamen.

Changsha was a dark horse candidate this year. The Report says that Changsha has not used attractive ways to encourage college students to settle down; nor has it become an internet celebrity city. However, it leads the whole country in registered stock of market entities, investment amount, and population inflow. It has a lot to do with its low housing price and investment cost.

The person in charge of Fn-link Technology felt this deeply when he decided to move the company’s headquarters from Shenzhen to the central region. He inspected many cities and finally chose Changsha. He said Changsha has the geographical advantages – connecting Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south; Hubei and Anhui in the north; and, Chongqing in the west. Changsha has convenient transportation such as high-speed rail, airport, and shipping. The relatively low housing price is also conducive to the stability of the staff. 

Source: http://en.changsha.gov.cn