Why Chinese Cities Need More City Branding: Example Ningbo

Why Chinese Cities Need More City Branding: Example Ningbo Why are Chinese cities – many with economic performance stronger than some European countries – performing poorly in international city brand rankings? Ramon Thomas in this guest post takes a closer look at the Anholt Gfk-Roper City Brands Index and examines the city brand performance of Ningbo in the study’s six key dimensions.To get more Ningbo City, you can visit shine news official website. China has over 600 cities, and according to the Demographia World Urban Areas 2017 report has 102 cities with more than 1 million residents.

Some of those cities are world-renown, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. However, there are many little-known cities, such as Dongguan and Ningbo. This is surprising, considering their size and economic performance. For decades, the focus of these Chinese cities has been economic development. The central government in Beijing allowed and even encouraged this with great fervor, and the results have been nothing less than astounding. According to the World Bank, China has cut poverty by half in 2001, 14 years ahead of the Millennium Development Goals deadline of 2015. City branding is absolutely necessary because of the increased internationalization of Chinese cities.

Even though there remains a strong control by the government on culture, more and more foreign enterprises, as well as foreign entrepreneurs, have leapt at opportunities provided by the amount of capital available for economic development.One of the most telling aspects of this index is that not one city in China, or Asia, made it into the Top 10 in 2016. Even though Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong are included in the 50 cities surveyed, they have not performed as well as may be expected, considering their “per capita” income or GDP rankings. Other cities, like Ningbo, are not even on the radar. The city of Ningbo may be the 2nd busiest port in China, after Shanghai. Its proximity to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, places it in a triangle of influence with Shanghai. Some of the industries that have flourished include manufacturing of garments, plastics and automotive parts. Let’s apply the City Brand Index criteria to Ningbo to exemplify the situation many Chinese cities find themselves in: