Shanghai Photo: VCG

Shanghai’s GDP reached 4.32 trillion yuan ($680 billion) in 2021, up 8.1 percent over the previous year, making it the second Chinese city after Beijing to surpass the four-trillion-yuan mark. 

Gong Zheng, mayor of Shanghai, said on Thursday that local economic development in 2021 remained stable and healthy. The city’s consumer price index rose 1.2 percent while urban unemployment remained significantly lower than the set target with a total of 635, 000 new jobs being created last year. 

Shanghai’s GDP in 2021 beats expectations of more than 6 percent annualized growth rate and urban unemployment rate being kept under 5 percent. Gong said that the city’s GDP growth for 2022 is expected to rise around 5.5 percent, while growth of consumers prices will reach 3 percent, with a heightened emphasis being placed on ecological and environmental protection. 

Beijing announced last year’s economic results on Wednesday, totaling 4.03 trillion yuan in GDP, up 8.5 percent from the previous year. Two-year average GDP growth reached 4.7 percent compared with 2019, Beijing-based news portal bbtnews.com reported. 

Meanwhile, several other provinces also announced their local GDP growth figures. 

South China’s Guangdong Province recorded a GDP of 12.4 trillion yuan in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 8 percent, with Dongguan becoming the province's fourth city with an economic output of over one trillion yuan. Total imports and exports of Guangdong exceeded 8 trillion yuan, up 16.7 percent. 

East China’s Jiangsu Province saw GDP growth of 8.6 percent compared with 2020, reaching 11.64 trillion yuan, with the growth rate 0.5 percentage points higher than the national average of 8.1 percent, according to local news site xhby.net.

Global Times