City ascends to become the ninth-most competitive nationwide

Macau has climbed one place to become the ninth-most competitive city out of a total of 294 Chinese cities in the rankings resulting from the latest research carried out by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Despite ranking the city first in terms of comprehensive efficient competitiveness, the report also suggested that the gaming-based economy was vulnerable to the external fluctuating environment; this vulnerability has caused it to miss the top 200 cities as ranked by comprehensive increment competitiveness for the third consecutive year.
Entitled Blue Book on Urban Competitiveness, the report’s detailed results about the city were officially released at the Macau University of Science and Technology yesterday morning. Aside from the above rankings, Macau was ranked the fourth-best Chinese city for sustainable competiveness, even higher than the city of Shenzhen, which overtook Hong Kong as the most competitive city this year. The former British colony has held the top spot for the past decade since 2005.
Nonetheless, according to this 13th edition of the research paper, Macau could have been ranked higher if the local government had devoted more financial resources to scientific research. Local spending in that area only accounted for a mere 0.08 percent of the public fiscal revenue in the last year, which stood far below the national average of 2.89 percent.
Macau could be synonymous with the adjectives “harmonious,” “eco-friendly” and “cultural,” as the city stood out among other hubs, being ranked the second, third and fourth in each of the above categories.
Furthermore, the report suggested that Macau should push for economic diversification to withstand any impacts incurred by the external adverse factors. Secondly, the government should expand the city’s development through regional cooperation with the Guangdong free trade zone as well as participation in the central government’s strategic initiative of “one belt one road.” Also, authorities’ attention towards education and scientific research ought to be increased in order to encourage local teenagers to try their hand at launching a business in other Chinese regions.
The one-hour presentation yesterday was concluded by Yang Yunzhong, from the One Country Two Systems Research Centre at the Macao Polytechnic Institute, who praised the city as “a little stage with a full repertoire.” However, the scholar expressed his regrets over livability, saying that two-thirds of local citizens’ living standards were way below the average of the world’s advanced nations, and far below that of the top city in the rankings. The 82-year-old also believed that it would be possible to add one more category into the research: competitiveness of freedom. He thought that Macau could even defeat Hong Kong and Taiwan to take the lead, given that the society here has embraced more academic freedom and inclusiveness.
The annual report, which also assesses Taiwan, is compiled by cross-strait scholars and published every May. Taipei was ranked the fourth-most competitive city, standing four places above the Chinese capital, Beijing, which only just surpassed Macau. Staff reporter