Em I think the first-tier city, we usually
call the ‘Big Four’. The natural order
would be ‘Bei Shan Guang Shen’ –
Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
But recently, I think people try to change
the order somewhat, they tend to think
Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, then Guangzhou
because Shenzhen has been doing quite well
recently. Beijing to be the first,
not necessarily because of its economic
power but more importantly, I think China
is still very much affected by the, you may
call it the visible hand and I think
the visible hand is still very important.
The government's involvement is still quite
important; so the people have to put
Beijing as top. But of course, I think
the Big Four is at a quite advanced
stage in terms of size of the economy.
So certainly we do see this very much
the first-tier. And the second-tier
would naturally include Tianjin,
would include Chongqing because they
very much enjoy the provincial level status
and and then would be very much
the capital cities of the major provinces.
But having said that, there are certain
city that they are as strong as some of the
capital cities, for instance,
if you are looking at Suzhou,
Suzhou is as as prosperous as Nanjing,
and similarly for Qingdao versus Ji’nan.
And then you go down to like the
third tier cities, then third, fourth,
fifth to nth tier cities.
As we discussed earlier, I think China is a
huge market and they are very different.
So we just have to sort of look at the
different tiers. They could be very
different in terms of the economic
developments and also the GDP
per capita could be quite different.
Of course, I think the Big Four,
they probably have enjoyed more wealth
and the average income of those people
is higher. And then also some of the
infrastructure, the education, the medical,
and some of the supporting facility
would be better in a major city.
But then, whereas in some of the
inland provinces and they are still doing
very much the catching up.