NEWS & EVENT – Page 5 – China Integrated City Index

China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index 2019 released

Compiled by Cloud River Urban Research Institute, a high-level think tank, the China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index 2019 was recently released. In the comprehensive ranking, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen occupy the top three positions, followed by Guangzhou, Tianjin, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing and Nanjing.

All the top nine cities for the 2019 ranking are the same as the year before, while the 10th, formerly Wuhan, have been replaced by a non-core city Suzhou. Several cities like Ningbo, Zhengzhou, Jinan, Fuzhou, Guiyang, Shijiazhuang, Nanning, and Yinchuan have all climbed higher in the ranking.

Shenyang, Changchun, and Harbin, the three provincial capitals in northeastern China, have moved down in the 2019 ranking by two, one and three places to the 21st, 26th and 29th, respectively. Due to the economic slowdown, these once-booming heavy industry bases are now in an awkward position in competition with other Chinese core cities.

Chart1: China-Core-Cities-&-Metropolitan-Area-Development-Index-2019-Total-Ranking-36-Cities [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

A key feature of the China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index is that it is an analysis of 36 core cities, including four municipalities, 22 provincial capitals, five capitals of autonomous regions, and five cities with independent planning status, against the evaluation of growth performance of 297 cities at prefecture level or above across the country. According to the analysis, the 36 core cities account for 40.5% of China’s total GDP, 51.3% of the export of goods, 48.6% of the total number of authorized patents, 24% of the permanent resident population, 42% of the DID (Densely Inhabited Districts) population, 67.5% of the total number of listed companies on the main board, 94.8% of the prestigious universities under the Project 985 and Project 211, 57.8% of the five-star hotels, and 48.1% of the top hospitals.

The China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index 2019 mainly measures 10 major items, namely the city status, metropolitan area power, radiation ability, wide-area hub, opening and communications, business environment, innovation and entrepreneurship, ecological resources and environment, life quality, as well as culture and education. It is also supported by 30 sub-items and 114 sets of index data to comprehensively evaluate the high-quality development of core cities in a science-based, systematic and detailed manner.

The China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index is supported by a selection of 438 data sets closely related with its theme, including statistical data, satellite remote sensing data and internet data, from the 878 data sets which support the China Integrated City Index. Therefore, the China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index is a Multimodal Index that uses the “five senses” to analyze and measure a city’s development through statistical resources of different fields. For example, through satellite remote sensing data, we can analyse the relationship of population scale, distribution and density in DIDs with other factors like economic development, infrastructures, social development and ecological and environmental protection, elevating the research of metropolitan areas to a higher level.

It is worth noting that CO2 emissions data is included in the China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index 2019. Through years of efforts, Cloud River Urban Research Institute has finally been able to calculate CO2 emissions of each city through satellite data analysis and GIS analysis, which increased the accuracy and depth of its evaluations on the cities’ performance.

Chart2: Structure Diagram of China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

1.City status

Beijing and Shanghai top the city status ranking with overwhelming leads. Following them, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan round out the top 10. Compared with the 2018 index, Beijing and Shanghai have maintained their top two positions, while Tianjin, Chongqing and Shenzhen have climbed higher in the ranking. It is worth noting that Shenzhen has moved from ninth to sixth in the 2019 ranking.

The city status dimension not only looks at a city’s administrative levels, but also evaluates its status and performance in some key indexes like the Belt and Road initiative, and some National Strategies like the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Integrated Development.

Therefore, we have established three sub-dimensions including administrative function, megalopolis & metropolitan area, and the Belt and Road, which are supported by eight major indicating data sets namely administrative level, embassy & consulate, international organizations, megalopolis levels, core cities levels, metropolitan area levels, geological indexes under the Belt and Road, and historical status.

Chart3: City status [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) Administrative function

The top 10 cities in this sub-dimension are Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu and Wuhan, demonstrating the advantage of national capital, municipalities, and provincial cities in this ranking.

(2) Megalopolis & metropolitan area

The top 10 cities in this sub-dimension are Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Hefei, illustrating the advantage of major megalopolises like the Yangtze River Delta Megalopolis, the Pearl River Delta Megalopolis, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Megalopolis, and Chengdu-Chongqing Megalopolis.

(3) The Belt and Road

The top 10 cities in this sub-dimension are Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Urumqi, Kunming, Nanjing, Lhasa, Xi’an and Tianjin. Compared with the 2018 figures, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Nanjing have remained their places, while Guangzhou, Urumqi, Kunming, Lhasa and Xi’an have climbed higher in the ranking. Cities along the Belt and Road and those with frequent trade and investment and people’s movement tend to score higher in this sub-dimension.

2.Metropolitan area power

The top three cities in this dimension are Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen with overwhelming leads. Following them, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan round out the top 10. Compared with the 2018 figures, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou have secured their places, while Chongqing and Hangzhou have moved up by one and two places in the 2019 ranking. Other cities that fare well in the new ranking are Ningbo, Zhengzhou, Fuzhou, Jinan, Kunming, Guiyang, Shijiazhuang, Xining, Yinchuan, Hohhot and Lhasa.

The metropolitan area power is a basic indicator for the growth performance of a core city. This dimension not only focuses on a city’s economic and population scales, but also the population density, demographic structures and its capacity as an economic hub.

Therefore, we have established three sub-dimensions, namely the economic scale, metropolitan area quality and enterprise agglomeration, which are supported by 14 major indicators including the GDP, taxation, fixed assets investment, power consumption, permanent resident population, DID population, growth index of the permanent resident population, people’s movement, DID area index, population density of metropolitan area, structures of the metropolitan area, Fortune Global 500, Fortune China 500, and listed companies on the main board.

Chart4: Metropolitan area power [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) Economic scale

Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing top the economic scale ranking with overwhelming leads. Following them, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Chengdu, Wuhan, and Hangzhou round out the top 10. Shenzhen and Guangzhou have overtaken Tianjin in terms of economic scale with even better performance than the municipality. The top 10 cities in the 2019 ranking remain the same with the 2018 ranking. Cities including Zhengzhou, Ningbo, Changsha, Xi’an, Hefei, Fuzhou, Jinan, Kunming, Taiyuan, Urumqi, Lanzhou, Hohhot, Yinchuan, Xining and Lhasa all fair well compared to their ranking in the previous year.

(2) Metropolitan area quality

The top 10 core cities in this sub-dimension are Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan, Chengdu and Hangzhou. Among the 297 cities at prefecture level or above, Chongqing has moved from 43rd to 31st in terms of metropolitan area quality, which contributes to its higher ranking in terms of metropolitan area power. Similarly, Hangzhou also moves from 13th to the 10th in terms of metropolitan area quality, contributing to its higher position in the metropolitan area power ranking.

(3) Enterprise agglomeration

Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen top the ranking with overwhelming leads with a huge concentration of business headquarters. Following them, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo, Chongqing, and Fuzhou round out the top 10. Among the 36 core cities, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Jinan, Qingdao, Zhengzhou, Yinchuan and Hohhot have moved higher in the ranking compared with the previous year.

3.Radiation ability

Beijing tops the radiation ability ranking with an overwhelming lead, and occupies the first place in all the sub-dimensions. It is followed by Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, and Xi’an in the top 10 ranking. Compared with the 2018 ranking, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Nanjing have secured their places, Guangzhou and Wuhan have moved higher, Chengdu and Xi’an have slightly moved down, and Tianjin dropped out of the top 10 list.

What makes core cities unique is their radiation ability on their neighboring regions. Therefore, radiation ability is key to the definition of a core city, and an indicator for a city’s influence on its neighboring regions and even the whole country. This dimension evaluates a city’s radiation ability in terms of industry, technology, higher education, as well as life services.

So we have established three sub-dimensions, namely industry radiation, sci-tech and higher education radiation, as well as life services radiation, which are supported by 9 major indicators including manufacturing radiation, IT industry radiation, finance radiation, sci-tech radiation, higher education radiation, culture, sports and entertainment radiation, healthcare radiation, wholesale and retail service radiation, and catering and hotel radiation.

Chart5: Radiation ability [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) Industry radiation

The top 10 cities in this ranking are Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Xiamen. Among the 36 core cities, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Chengdu, Xiamen, Fuzhou, and Ningbo have secured their places in 2018, while Guangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hefei, Haikou, Shenyang, Taiyuan, Shijiazhuang, Xining, Urumqi, Nanning and Hohhot have moved higher in the ranking compared with the previous year.

(2) Sci-tech and higher education radiation

Beijing tops this ranking with a huge lead, and is followed by Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan and Xi’an. Compared with 2018, Beijing, Shanghai, Changsha, Dalian, Hefei, Shenyang, and Taiyuan have maintained their places, while Shenzhen, Nanjing, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Jinan, Qingdao, Ningbo, Changchun, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shijiazhuang and Yinchuan have moved higher.

(3) Life services radiation

Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu top this ranking, with Beijing having an overwhelming lead. Following them, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Xi’an round out the top 10. The top 6 cities in the 2018 ranking have secured their places in the new ranking. Nanjing moves from 10th to 7th, while Shenzhen drops from 7th to 8th.

4. Wide-area hub

Shanghai, which has advantages in waterway, air and road transportation, ranks first in the wide-area hub category with a much higher deviation than other cities. The cities ranking second to 10th are Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen, Chongqing, and Nanjing. Compared with 2018, the top five cities remain unchanged. The rankings of Qingdao and Xiamen have climbed slightly. The ranking of Chongqing has increased from 11th in 2018 to ninth in 2019, with land transportation contributing a lot.

The transportation hub is an extremely important function of a core city, and it is also the basis for strengthening and amplifying other core functions. The wide-area hub is a major item that measures the conditions and transportation volumes of waterway, air and road transportation facilities.

Thus, this major item includes three sub-items, waterway transportation, air transportation, and road transportation. They are gauged by 10 sets of indexes and data, including convenience at container ports, container throughput of ports, waterway transportation volume, convenience at airports, air transportation volume, convenience of railways, railway density, highway density, national and provincial highway density, and highway transportation volume.

Chart6: Wide-area hub [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) Waterway transportation

Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Ningbo are the top three in this sub-item, and the other top 10 core cities include Guangzhou, Qingdao, Tianjin, Xiamen, and Dalian. Those ranking high in this sub-item are mostly coastal cities.

(2) Air transportation

Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, which are China’s largest air transportation hub cities, are the top three in this sub-item. They have significant advantages in this regard as shown by their deviation values. The cities ranking fourth to 10th are Shenzhen, Chengdu, Kunming, Chongqing, Xi’an, Hangzhou, and Zhengzhou. The dependence on air transportation in China’s southwest and northwest regions has made Chengdu, Kunming, Chongqing, and Xi’an air transportation hubs.

(3) Land transportation

Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Guiyang are the top three in this sub-item, and the other top 10 core cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chongqing, and Wuhan. Guiyang stands out in this sub-item.

5. Opening and communications

The top 10 core cities in opening and communications are Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin, Chengdu, Ningbo, and Hangzhou. Among them, compared with 2018, Shanghai has maintained its top position, while the rankings of Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu, and Ningbo have increased.

Opening and communications is a major item that measures the degree of exchanges and transaction involving people, finance, and goods in cities in the context of globalization. It includes three sub-items, international trade, international investment, and communications performance. They are gauged by 11 sets of indexes and data, including exports of goods, imports of goods, actual use of foreign capital, foreign direct investment, inbound tourists, domestic tourists, foreign exchange earnings from international tourism, revenue of domestic tourism, world tourism cities, international conferences, and exhibition industry development.

Chart7: Opening and communications [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) International trade

Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing are the top three in this sub-item. The top 10 core cities also include Guangzhou, Ningbo, Tianjin and Xiamen. Compared with 2018, the rankings of Ningbo, Chengdu, Hefei, Changsha, Jinan, Kunming, Nanning, and Haikou have increased.

(2) International investment

Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing are the top three in this sub-item. The cities ranking fourth to 10th are Tianjin, Chongqing, Ningbo, Qingdao, Chengdu, Dalian, and Wuhan. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, the rankings of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Ningbo, Chengdu, Dalian, and Wuhan have increased.

(3) Communications performance

Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou are the top three in this sub-item. Their deviation values score much higher than those of other cities. The cities ranking fourth to 10th are Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Xi’an, and Xiamen. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, the rankings of Hangzhou, Wuhan, Xi’an, and Xiamen have increased.

6. Business environment

The top three cities in the business environment category are Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The cities ranking fourth to 10th are Shenzhen, Chengdu, Nanjing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Hangzhou, and Chongqing. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, the rankings of Beijing, Nanjing, Wuhan, and Hangzhou have increased.

The business environment is a major item that measures a city’s capability in supporting communication economy and transaction economy. It evaluates not only business support, but also a city’s policy support. It is particularly worth mentioning that the major item also takes into consideration urban transportation as an important part of it.

Thus, this major item includes three sub-items, industrial park support, business support, and urban transportation. They are gauged by 10 sets of index data, including national industrial parks, free trade areas, average salary of employees, the number of employees in company-oriented service sector, starred hotels, top international restaurants, passenger transport volume per 10,000 people, mileage of urban rail transit, urban sidewalk and bicycle path density, and urban public transit.

Chart8: Business environment [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) Industrial park support

Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Xiamen are the top three in this sub-item. The top 10 core cities also include Haikou, Tianjin, Chongqing, and Xi’an. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, the rankings of Shenzhen, Haikou, and Tianjin have increased.

(2) Business support

Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are the top three in this sub-item. The top 10 core cities also include Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Nanjing, and Chongqing. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, the rankings of Shenzhen and Nanjing have increased.

(3) Urban transportation

Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are the top three in this sub-item. The cities ranking fourth to 10th also include Shenzhen, Wuhan, Chengdu, Nanjing, Lanzhou, Hangzhou, and Urumqi. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, Beijing has replaced Shanghai in the top spot, and the rankings of Chengdu, Lanzhou, and Hangzhou have increased.

7. Innovation and entrepreneurship

In this major item, Shenzhen has replaced Beijing in the top spot. Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou claim the top three in this sub-item. The top 10 core cities also include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Tianjin, and Wuhan. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, the rankings of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Chengdu have increased.

Innovation and entrepreneurship, as a platform for communication economy and transaction economy to integrate, reorganize, and boom, serves as the main driving force for a core city to develop. Therefore, this major item values not only the resources and investment in research and development (R&D), but also the results and especially achievements. It also evaluates the policy support in this field.

Thus, this major item includes three sub-items, R&D agglomeration, innovation and entrepreneurship vitality, and policy support. They are gauged by 10 sets of index data, including internal R&D expenditures, local government expenditures for science and technology, R&D personnel, index of academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, companies listed on Growth Enterprise Market and National Equities Exchange and Quotations, patent application and authorization volume, national reform pilot zones, national innovation demonstration zones, information and knowledge industries, and national key laboratories and engineering research centers.

Chart9: Innovation and entrepreneurship [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) R&D agglomeration

Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai are the top three in this sub-item. Their deviation values are much higher than those of other cities, indicating that they lead other cities by a large margin in terms of R&D expenditures and R&D personnel reserves. The top 10 core cities also include Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Chengdu. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, the rankings of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Chengdu have increased.

(2) Innovation and entrepreneurship vitality

Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai are the top three in this sub-item. The deviation values of Shenzhen and Beijing are much higher than those of other cities. The top 10 core cities also include Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Nanjing. Compared with 2018, none of the top 10 core cities has moved up in rankings.

(3) Policy support

Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing are the top three cities in this sub-item. The top 10 core cities also include Tianjin, Chengdu, Wuhan, Qingdao, Xi’an, and Shenzhen. Municipalities directly under the central government stand out in this aspect. Compared with 2018, among the top 10 core cities, the rankings of Chengdu, Wuhan, Xi’an, and Shenzhen have increased.

8. Ecological resources and environment

Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing are the top three in the ecological resources and environment category. The top 10 core cities also include Guangzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xiamen, and Wuhan. Compared with 2018, among the 36 core cities, the rankings of Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, Changsha, Guiyang, Kunming, Lhasa, and Xining have more or less increased.

Ecology and environment quality as well as resource efficiency become increasingly more important for urban development. This major item, ecological resources and environment, pays attention to environmental quality and resource efficiency, and also takes into account the evaluation of environmental efforts. It is particularly worth emphasizing that it also introduces the evaluation of CO2 emissions this year.

Thus, this major item includes three sub-items, resource and environment qualities, environmental efforts, and resource efficiency. They are gauged by 15 sets of index data, including comfortable degree of weather, air quality, water resources per 10,000 people, forest area, direct losses caused by natural disasters, direct losses caused by geological disasters, disaster warnings, area of green space in parks, environmental efforts, projects of designing, evaluating, and identifying environment-friendly buildings, national environmental protection city, population in densely inhabited districts, CO2 emissions per unit of GDP, per capita CO2emissions, and urban land output rate.

Chart10: Ecological resources and environment [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) Resource and environment qualities

Among the 36 core cities, only Haikou, Lhasa, and Kunming rank among the top 30 in the country in this sub-item, ranking 15th, 17th and 27th, respectively. Environment quality seems to be common shortcomings of core cities. Compared with 2018, among the 36 core cities, the rankings of Chongqing, Ningbo, Nanning, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Lanzhou, Xining, Hefei, Changsha, and Wuhan have risen significantly.

(2) Environmental efforts

Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are the top three in this sub-item. The top 10 core cities also include Chongqing, Guangzhou, Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin, and Chengdu. Compared with 2018, among the 36 core cities, the rankings of Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Xiamen, Jinan, Ningbo, Xi’an, Guiyang, Changchun, Yinchuan, Taiyuan, Urumqi, Hohhot, Haikou, and Xining have increased.

(3) Resource efficiency

Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing are the top three in this sub-item. The top 10 core cities also include Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Changsha, and Nanjing. Compared with 2018, among the 36 core cities, the rankings of Changsha, Chongqing, Guiyang, and Lhasa have increased.

9. Life quality

In the ranking of life quality, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou take the first three spots, followed by Hangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Tianjin and Shenzhen. Compared with the 2018 ranking, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have remained the top three, while Hangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing and Wuhan have moved up slightly.

The quality of life is one of a city’s attractions for high-end professionals, and the service industry for sustaining the quality of life is a pillar of a city’s development. The major item of life quality puts safety and livability first, and also assesses living consumption level, as well availability of medical resources.

Therefore, the major item is divided into three indexes, namely safety and livability, living consumption, and medical welfare. The sub-indexes are made up of 14 data sets, including livable cities, clean cities, safe cities, happy cities, transportation safety, retail sales of social consumer goods per 10,000 people, international top brands, revenue of accommodation and catering per 10,000 people, telecommunication consumption per 10,000 people, water consumption per 10,000 residents, average life expectancy, the number of licensed (assistant) doctors, top hospitals, and the number of nursing homes at the end of the year.

Chart11: Life quality [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) Safety and livability.

Shanghai top the ranking and Chengdu come in at No. 2. Other cities in the top 10 are Hangzhou, Beijing, Ningbo, Nanjing, Xi’an, and Changsha. Compared with the 2018 ranking, the top four cities have remained the same, while many cities among the 36 core cities have improved their rankings, especially Xi’an, Guangzhou, Zhengzhou, Kunming, Jinan, Fuzhou, Lhasa, Guiyang, Harbin, Nanchang, Hohhot, Lanzhou, Taiyuan, and Xining.

(2) Living consumption

Beijing and Shanghai take the top two spots, followed by Guangzhou, Haikou, Lhasa, Xiamen, Shenzhen and Nanjing. Compared with 2018, Beijing and Shanghai have remained their places, while Haikou, Lhasa and Xiamen have moved up slightly.

(3) Medical welfare

Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing rank top three, followed by Guangzhou, Chengdu, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Jinan and Nanjing. Compared with 2018, Chongqing, Chengdu and Jinan have better performance.

10. Culture and education

Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou top the ranking of culture and education, as the top two cities’ deviation values are well above other cities, showing the two cities’ leading positions in culture and education. Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Chongqing and Shenzhen rank fourth to 10th. Compared with 2018, the top six cities retain their positions, while Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Hefei, Fuzhou, Kunming, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan and Lhasa climb up slightly in the ranking.

Culture and education reflect the spiritual side of the city. Culture and education not only focus on venues and consumption of culture and entertainment in the city, but also measure cultural performance at the national and international levels, and pay extra attention to the input of education and fostering of talents.

Thus, the major item includes three sub-items—culture and entertainment, culture and humanity, and talent training. They are gauged by 13 sets of index data, including theater consumption, museums and galleries, stadiums, zoos, botanical gardens and aquariums, collection of public libraries, top universities, cultural leaders, Olympic medalists, local fiscal spending on education, the number of kids admitted to kindergartens per 10,000 kids, international schools, higher education, and training of outstanding professionals.

Chart12: Life quality [Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute]

(1) Culture and entertainment

Beijing and Shanghai rank first and second in the ranking, as they score much higher deviation values than other cities, showing their dominance in the culture and entertainment sector. Cities ranking second to 10th are Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Tianjin. Compared with 2018, Beijing and Shanghai retain their positions, while Chongqing, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Jinan, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Lhasa move up in the ranking.

(2) Culture and humanity

Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing take the first three spots, with Beijing scoring a higher deviation value than other cities, demonstrating Beijing’s dominance in the sub-index. Guangzhou, Wuhan, Xi’an, Changsha, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Chengdu take the fourth to 10th places. Compared with 2018, some cities among the 36 central cities, such as Shenzhen, Taiyuan, Kunming, and Ningbo, have improved their rankings remarkably.

(3) Talent training

Beijing and Shanghai rank first and second, respectively, with their deviation values much higher than other cities, showing that China’s education resources concentrate in those two cities. Guangzhou, Tianjin, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan and Shenzhen round out the top 10. Compared with 2018, the top five cities maintain their positions, while Hangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Hefei, Shijiazhuang, Lhasa, Changchun, Dalian and Taiyuan, all among 36 core cities, fare better in the ranking.

The National Development and Reform Commission issued the “Guiding Opinions on Fostering the Development of Modern Metropolitan Areas” on Feb. 19, 2019, kick starting policies to promote metropolitan areas revolving around core cities.

“In the new phase of China’s urbanization, it is urgent to put an emphasis on quality high-density population and the promotion of DID, which should come to the fore in formulating policies regarding metropolitan areas. The other focal point is to promote the interaction-based development of core cities and neighboring medium and small cities. The third focus should be placed on fostering and strengthening radiation of core functions,” said Zhou Muzhi, head of Cloud River Research Institute.

He added, what is worth noting is the core functions of core cities as international exchange platforms. In the age of globalization, international competitiveness and international exchanges are key to the future of a country. Thus the country’s international competitiveness and international exchanges should be reflected by the internationalism of metropolitan areas.

China Core Cities & Metropolitan Area Development Index draws on the thinking of the above issues, as well as observation and assessment of the development of core cities, and thus provide academic backing for the development of metropolitan areas.

The article was published on China SCIO Online on Jan 21, 2021, and was republished by foreign media, including China Daily, Guangming Daily, as well as today’s headlines and other platforms.

‘Jared M. Diamond Hypothesis’ VS ‘Zhou Muzhi Hypothesis’

Zhou Muzhi, professor of Tokyo Keizai University

There had been 1.5 COVID-19 deaths among every 100,000 Japanese by Nov. 11, 2020. This was a “slight” death rate compared with Spain’s 58.8, the U.S.’ 74.6, the U.K.’s 74, Italy’s 71.1, France’s 65.1, and Germany’s 14.1. The question is raised that how Japan managed to control its COVID deaths at such a low level, while implementing the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy” that European countries and the U.S. all deployed.

Among all speculations trying to explain Japan’s low death level, I think “cross-immunity” is the most compelling one. The theory opined that the immunity acquired by the Japanese people has played a role to some extent in preventing COVID-19 or mitigating its symptoms.

The question here is how Japanese people acquired cross-immunity against the novel coronavirus.

U.S. expert Jared M. Diamond hypothesized in his “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” that during the long time of close contact with poultry, European people became immune to many pathogenic bacteria. On the contrary, as Americas had no domesticated poultry, native people there lacked immunity to bacteria. The European people brought bacteria to Americas in the age of great navigation. The bacteria wreaked havoc on natives who lacked immunity, wiping out population .

I agree with Jared M. Diamond’s hypothesis that Europeans obtained immunity from their long-time close contact with poultry. However, the hypothesis failed to explain why European countries were greatly eclipsed by Japan in terms of the number of COVID-19 deaths, despite of the fact they are all in Eurasia. What’s more, besides Japan, other East Asian countries, including China, all reported smaller numbers of COVID-19 deaths

By Nov. 11, China, South Korea, China’s Taiwan province and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Vietnam, and Thailand registered 0.3, 0.9, 0.03, 1.4, 0.04 and 0.09 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people, respectively, “very minor” compared with European countries rich in medical resources. Such relatively good performances, though largely due to the “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy,” have also benefited from cross immunity.

I hereby put forward a hypothesis that the lifestyle centering on rice fields in humid regions of East Asia plays a determining role in people’s acquisition of cross immunity against the novel coronavirus. The “Zhou Muzhi Hypothesis” is detailed as follows: The humid rice-growing Satoyama boasts rich ecological diversity, and a new ecology formed upon a moderate intervention of human beings in nature, one with richer diversity than primitive natural ecology. The diversity is also reflected in microorganisms. In Satoyama, human beings, nature, and poultry are in close contact and influence each other, shaping a huge breeding spot for pathogens. This place is richer in microorganism diversity than Europe, though they both belong to Eurasia. Therefore, I infer that people living in rice-growing regions with a variety of pathogens have stronger cross immunity .

Studies on cross immunity against novel coronavirus are still in their infancy. The recent research findings published by Manish Sagar of Boston University confirmed that people who have been infected with seasonal coronaviruses can develop cross immunity against novel coronavirus, thus alleviating severe symptoms . Tatsuhiko Kodama from the Isotope Science Center at the University of Tokyo found through an analysis of the blood of 50 COVID-19 patients in Japan that 75% of the patients have cross immunity against the novel coronavirus .

In fact, seasonal coronaviruses have been frequently around in the humid regions of East Asia. If they can help people develop cross immunity against the novel coronavirus, it should be a grace of living in the rice-growing Satoyama.

From this perspective, it is important and worthwhile to think how to evaluate the life in Satoyama where people and nature influence each other, and how to draw on experience from Satoyama lifestyle in our modern life.

(The English version of this article is translated by Chen Linfeng.)

The article was published on China Net on May 12, 2021, and was republished by foreign media, as well as today’s headlines and other platforms.

Global COVID-19 responses: ‘Zero COVID-19 Case Policy’ vs. ‘Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy’

By Zhou Muzhi, professor of Tokyo Keizai University and president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute

Editor’s note:
How come the metropolises around the world with concentrated medical resources are so vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic? Why China has managed to control the outbreak so quickly? Why Western countries and Japan are seeing a resurgence in the coronavirus outbreak? Professor Zhou Muzhi, president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute, offers his interpretation by comparing the COVID-19 responses adopted by different countries around the world.

On Jan. 23, 2020, Wuhan and its surrounding cities like Ezhou and Huanggang announced the suspension of all public transportation such as bus, subway and ferry, temporary cancellation of all flights and trains departing from Wuhan, and temporary closure of all highway entrances to slow the spread of the new virus. The announcement shocked the world. On Jan. 24, Hubei province launched the level I public health emergency response, with other parts of China following suit until all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities were in the highest level for a public health emergency by Jan. 29. At the press conference of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council held on Feb. 8, the new infectious disease was named as the Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP). Later the World Health Organization (WHO) renamed the disease as COVID-19 on Feb. 11.

As the first big city to confront the COVID-19 outbreak, Wuhan saw a surge in coronavirus infections that crippled its medical system. As the virus continued to spread around the world, many cities saw a heavy blow to their medical services. On March 11, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

In a study of the medical system overwhelmed by the pandemic, I on April 20 published an article titled “COVID-19: Why is medical system in metropolises so vulnerable?” (Hereafter referred to as the April article)[1]. The article explains why metropolises are so vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic and how effective Wuhan was in response to the new disease. It was published on China.com.cn and reposted by over 100 media outlets like people.com.cn, xinhuanet.com and gmw.cn.

On April 21, the English version of the article was published on China.org.cn[2] and later reposted by English media outlets both at home and abroad including the websites of the State Council Information Office of China and China Daily.

On May 12, the Japanese version was published on japanese.china.org.cn[3].

The article analyzes the good practices and lessons learned from Wuhan’s COVID-19 response as well as major concerns and measures that should be taken by the medical system amid the pandemic. It serves as a reference for cities around the world in their battle against the novel coronavirus.

After six months, I write this article to explore different measures and effectiveness of the global COVID-19 responses based on the April article with some statistical updates, new diagrams and endnotes.

1. 2019 ranking on health care radiation of Chinese cities

As part of the China Integrated City Index, Cloud River Urban Research Institute has released the 2019 ranking on health care radiation based on a research of 297 cities at prefecture level and above across China. The top 10 are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Jinan, Zhengzhou, Nanjing and Taiyuan. The following 10 are Tianjin, Shenyang, Changsha, Xi’an, Kunming, Qingdao, Nanning, Changchun, Chongqing, and Shijiazhuang. And the next 10 are Urumqi, Shenzhen, Dalian, Fuzhou, Lanzhou, Nanchang, Guiyang, Suzhou, Ningbo and Wenzhou. Please note that Wuhan, the first city to confront COVID-19, ranked sixth.

Jointly developed by Cloud River Urban Research Institute and the Development Planning Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, China Integrated City Index is a system that evaluates growth performance of cities across the country. The institute has been publishing the city index annually since 2016.

The index measures urban development in three dimensions: the environment, society and economy. Under each dimension lies many indicators that support its three sub-dimensions at different layers. The health care radiation is among those indicators.

All of its indicators are supported by 785 data sets, which come from statistical data, satellite remote sensing data, and internet data. China Integrated City Index is a multi-modal index[4] to analyze and measure a city’s development through statistical resources of different fields.

The radiation index measures a city’s capacity in providing goods and services in certain areas. A high radiation score means the city has the capacity to sell its goods and services, while a low radiation score means that it needs to purchase certain goods and services from other places.

Evaluating a city’s health care radiation mainly focuses on the number of physicians and the 3A-grade hospitals. The top 30 cities account for 15% of the certified physicians, 30% of hospital beds and 45% of 3A-grade hospitals in the country. China’s medical resources, especially the best hospitals, are mainly concentrated in cities higher in the ranking, which serve local residents as well as people from all around China.

The questions raised in the April article are: Why cities like Wuhan, equipped with one of the top medical resources in China, could be so vulnerable to the COVID-19 outbreak and even overwhelmed by the influx of patients? What should cities do to prepare for future epidemics?

Chart 1: List of top 30 Chinese cities by health care radiation in 2019
Source: Cloud River Urban Research Institute

2. A test for the health care system

Wuhan was the first to confront the COVID-19 outbreak. The city climbed one place to the sixth in the 2019 health care radiation ranking, as it boasts 27 3A-grade hospitals, nearly 40,000 physicians, 54,000 nurses and 95,000 beds. It is hard to expect that a city with such strong health care capacity could be overwhelmed by the coronavirus epidemic.

Other metropolises like New York and Milan are equally vulnerable to the pandemic. Tokyo, which declared a state of emergency on April 7, was also facing a breakdown of its medical system. The novel coronavirus is indeed a test for the health care system in all global cities.

In the April article, I believe that three reasons are attributed to the breakdown of the cities’ medical system.

(1) Overloaded hospitals

One feature of the COVID-19 epidemic is the exponential growth of infections. Especially during the early stage of the outbreak, the surge in infections and social panic have driven a lot of people, whether they were infected or not, to seek testing and treatment in hospitals. This has caused disorder, leaving those who are critically ill unable to receive efficient and quality care. It is also a reason for its high fatality rate. Moreover, the overcrowded emergency rooms, with confirmed cases, suspected patients as well as their families, can also lead to many hospital-acquired infections (HAIs).

Table 1: A comparison of medical resources in China, European countries, the U.S. and Japan in 2019
Sources: China City Statistical Yearbook by the National Bureau of Statistics, OECD.Stat, Kaiser Family Foundation, Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan

As is seen from Table 1, the density of physicians in the U.S., Japan and China are only 2.6, 2.5 and 2 per 1,000 people respectively, much lower than that in Germany (4.3), Italy (4) and Spain (4).

Wuhan, with a large concentration of medical resources, has 4.9 physicians per 1,000 people, which is much higher than the national average. But the city’s medical system was still overstretched by the outbreak. By May 11, the day before the April article’s Japanese version was published, 83.3% of the COVID-19 deaths in China had happened in Wuhan[5], which is believed to be caused by the overloaded hospitals.

Just like in Wuhan, medical workers in the U.S. are also concentrated in big cities. The New York state has 4.6 physicians per 1,000 people, but it is still not enough to avoid a massive breakdown in its medical system.

Italy, one of the hardest-hit countries in the pandemic, has a relatively high density of physicians, counting 4 per 1,000 people, but the country still suffers seriously overloaded hospitals and a breakdown in its health care system. In the Lombardy region where Milan is located, the number of infections has quickly risen from 1,000 on March 2, to over 10,000 on March 14, and to over 40,000 by the end of March. Many patients with critical conditions could not be treated in time due to overcrowded emergency rooms. By May 11, a total of 220,000 people in Italy had tested positive for COVID-19, and the death toll was 31,000, driving the fatality rate to 14%.

Japan’s Tokyo has 3.3 physicians per 1,000 people, lower than the level in Wuhan and the New York State. Therefore, the Japanese government has been trying to avoid overcrowded emergency rooms as a key part of its COVID-19 response. The government has established a pre-testing approval procedure to limit the number of testing and advised residents not to go to hospital during the pandemic to reduce hospitalization. [6]. Japan’s measures are so far effective to reduce the number of HAIs and lower the fatality rate as the medical resources are mostly given to those with critical conditions. By May 11, Tokyo’s fatality rate was 5.3%, compared to 7.9% in New York State.

Table 2: A comparison of numbers of COVID-19 confirmed cases, deaths, and death rates in China, European countries, the U.S. and Japan
Note: China’s number of COVID-19 infections in this table does not include those are asymptomatic.
Sources: Worldometer, Kaiser Family Foundation, stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp, website of the Health Commission of Hubei Province

Table 2 compares statistics between May 11 and Oct. 11, showing the COVID-19 infections, death toll, fatality rate and the number of deaths per 100,000 people in China, Japan, the U.S. and major European countries, as well as cities like Wuhan, Tokyo and New York.

By May 11, Spain had 56.9 deaths per 100,000 infections, Italy had 50.5, France 40.4, the U.S. 24.4, and Japan only 0.5. In this sense, Japan successfully controlled the number of deaths in the first outbreak after it avoided a breakdown in its medical system.

From the statistics by May 11, France’s COVID-19 fatality rate was up to 19.1%, and the U.K., Italy, and Spain also recorded double-digit fatality rate, while the rate in China and Japan were only 5.6% and 4%. At the same time, the global average COVID-19 fatality rate was up to 12.4%, which dealt a heavy blow to the human society.

However, from May 11 to Oct. 11, those countries and cities had seen a significant drop in COVID-19 fatality rate. During that period, China had zero COVID-19 death cases, while Japan controlled the rate at 1.4%. France and Spain which previously had very high fatality rate managed to lower it under 1%. Even the U.S. which had over 200,000 COVID-19 deaths also lowered the rate under 2.1%.

The reduction was attributable to less crowded emergency rooms compared to the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak. Though there is no specific medicine that can cure the disease, each country has, to some extent, found ways to treat their patients, which is also key to lowering the rate. Moreover, mass testing is another important reason.

In a period of five months, the global fatality rate lowered to 2.2%. It seems that the new virus is becoming less intimidating. Actually, the rate varies widely between different age groups. Chances of a relatively younger person dying from coronavirus is much lower than that of a relatively older person. For example, Japan’s fatality rate in August was 0.9%. By different age groups, the rate for people who are 69 or younger is only 0.2%, but the figure ghastly spiked to 8.1% for those who are 70 or older.

In his address to the Economic Club of New York on Oct. 14, the U.S. President Donald Trump said that 99.98% of the infected under the age of 50 can survive, but the seniors who had underlying conditions have higher risks. Therefore, protecting the high-risk groups through improving the prevention and control system is key to lowering the fatality rate.

(2) A drop in the number of health care workers

A drop in the number of medical staff caused by infections is another feature in this pandemic.

In the early stage of the outbreak, countries lacked knowledge of the coronavirus transmission, and medical staff faced a huge risk of infection due to the shortage of protective resources such as masks, protective clothing, and negative pressure wards. Those factors made testing, sampling, intubation, and other medical practices that are inherently at risk of exposure even more dangerous. As a result, countries have seen a significant decrease in the number of medical staff caused by infections, which also overstretched the medical system.

Infections not only happen in the treatment process. In this March, the extensive isolation and infection resulted from a dinner party attended by trainee doctors from Keio University Hospital also dealt a major blow to the already scarce medical workforce in Tokyo[7].

According to the International Council of Nurses (ICN), data reported by 30 countries showed that at least 90,000 health care workers had been tested positive for COVID-19 as of May 6. By May 5, Spain had 43,956 health care workers infected (accounting for 18% of the country’s total infections) and Italy had 19,942 medical staff tested positive for coronavirus, among which 150 physicians and 35 nurses died of the disease.

By Sept. 16, ICN said nearly 3 million health care workers might have infected with the novel coronavirus[8].

From January to June, 48 hospitals in Tokyo have reported HAIs which caused 889 infections among physicians, nurses and patients, and 140 of them had died of the disease. Those infections accounted for 14% of the total number of people who had coronavirus in Tokyo at that time, and the number of deaths resulted from such infections accounted for 43% of the total COVID-19 death toll in the same period. HAIs could not only weaken the medical system, but also lead to new infections among those who have underlying conditions, resulting in a higher infection fatality rate.

Even until October, HAIs were still frequently reported in Tokyo. For example, a hospital in Adachi confirmed on Oct. 15 that 39 patients and 12 staff have infected with coronavirus. A hospital in Nerima also reported 58 new infections, in which 23 were patients.

The super-transmissible coronavirus has severely threatened the safety of medical staff and weakened medical capabilities, resulting in the collapse of the medical system. Therefore, it is critical to avoid HAIs during the fight against COVID-19.

(3) A serious shortage of hospital beds

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, countries have experienced a shortage of medical supplies such as face masks, protective clothing, disinfectant, test kits, ventilators, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines, and especially, hospital beds. COVID-19 patients are required to be treated under quarantine to curb the spread of the super-transmissible coronavirus, and severe cases should be treated in intensive care units (ICUs), but hospitals have been in serious shortage of beds in general.

There are up to 13.1 hospital beds per 1,000 people in Japan, the highest in the world. For Tokyo, a city with a total of 128,000 hospital beds, the figure is 9.3. Even so, it already saw a severe shortage of hospital beds during the first COVID-19 outbreak.

In contrast to Tokyo, for every 1,000 people, Italy has a high number of doctors but only 3.1 beds, the U.S. has only 2.9 beds, and New York has only 2.6, which is even lower than the national average. Obviously, inadequate hospital beds have become a bottleneck that restricts medical institutions from receiving patients and hinders timely treatment.

The figure in China is 4.3, a quarter of that of Japan but higher than that of the U.S. and Italy. Wuhan, in particular, has 95,000 beds, or 8.6 beds per 1,000 people, almost as high as that of Tokyo, but it still suffered from a serious shortage of hospital beds in the early stage of the outbreak.

Another problem is that not all hospital beds are qualified for receiving COVID-19 patients for isolation, and the scramble for medical resources has made the bed shortage even more prominent.

3. What are effective responses?

Wuhan, the first city to suffer a collapse of medical system, finally quelled the plague of COVID-19 after 77 days of the lockdown. By mid-June 2020, all parts of China had gradually resumed normal production and life.

How did China quickly cope with the situation? It is extremely valuable for the world reeling from the ravages of COVID-19 to check out China’s experience.

(1) Lockdown policy

On Jan. 23, 2020, Wuhan in Hubei province suspended public transportation, closed airports, train stations and other routes leaving it, and asked people not to go outside the city, beginning the so-called lockdown[9]. On Jan. 24, the next day, the whole province activated the first-level response mechanism for major public health emergencies according to the Response Plan for Public Health Emergencies in Hubei province[10]. The response level specifies the degree of various measures to be taken in the identified infected area, and the first-level response requires to suspend work, classes and traffic to avoid any possible personnel flow and close contact[11].

As the upper-level regulation of the Response Plan for Public Health Emergencies of various provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, the National Response Plan for Public Health Emergencies was formulated based on the experience of combating SARS, and was announced on February 26, 2006, as one of the nation’s responses to public health emergencies[12].

Subsequently, other provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions also activated the first-level response mechanism. As of Jan. 29, after the Tibet Autonomous Region activated it, all regions in the entire country had implemented the first-level response mechanism.

Chart 2: Numbers of daily new COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths during Wuhan’s lockdown
Note 1: There is no data for Jan. 23, the day when the city began the lockdown, as well as data for Feb. 11. The number of confirmed cases surged on Feb. 12, presumably because it was added up by the figures of the previous day.
Source: The official website of the Health Commission of Hubei province.

Chart 2 shows the numbers of new confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths in Wuhan every day from Jan. 20, days before the lockdown, to Apr. 8, the day when the lockdown was lifted. On Feb. 13, 21 days after the lockdown, Wuhan finally began to see a decline in its daily number of new cases after overcoming various difficulties caused by an unknown virus outbreak, such as the collapse of medical system. On Mar. 18, 56 days after the lockdown, the figure was brought down to zero for the first time. Although a case was confirmed on Mar. 23, the figure remained to be zero for 16 consecutive days until the lockdown was lifted on Apr. 8.

It was undoubtedly a powerful move to lock down the city by cutting off traffic, suspending work, production and classes, and putting in place other measures strictly restricting personnel flow and close contact. Wuhan finally managed to fight back the novel coronavirus after 77 days of lockdown.

China saw the effects of its strict restriction measures throughout the country soon, and its new confirmed cases were quickly brought under control. On Feb. 21, Gansu province took the lead in lowering the response level from the first level to the third and resuming everyday production and life conditionally. Other regions also lowered their response levels from the first to the third since then. On June 13, as Hubei province lowered the level from the first to the third, the response levels across the country were brought down to the third. China has successfully addressed the first wave of COVID-19 thanks to the strict lockdown rules that brought the number of infected cases down to zero.

After that, various parts of China flexibly adjusted their response levels based on local epidemic situations. For example, Beijing raised its response level from the third to the second on June 16 due to a cluster of cases, and strengthened its epidemic prevention and control. As the epidemic was brought under control, Beijing lowered its response level back to the third on July 20.

(2) Quick dispatch of medics

In response to the serious shortage of medical personnel in Wuhan and their drop in number, the Chinese government quickly mobilized a large number of medical staff from all over the country to assist Wuhan. On Jan. 24, 2020, the second day after the lockdown, the Shanghai medical team to assist Wuhan arrived in the city first. It was made up of 136 doctors and nurses from the respiratory departments, infectious disease departments, hospital infection management departments and intensive care medicine departments of 52 hospitals in Shanghai. Eventually, 346 medical teams involving 42,600 medical workers were dispatched to Wuhan and other parts of Hubei province.

The Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council introduced at a press conference on Mar. 8 that it usually takes no more than two hours from the time a medical institution receives an order to the time a medical team is set up, and takes no more than 24 hours from the assembly of medical team members to their arrival in Wuhan. The emergency assistance quickly alleviated the pressure on Wuhan in medical terms and effectively saved the city’s medical system from collapsing.

It is certain that whether a country can offer its affected area rapid and effective assistance or not is one of the keys to winning over the epidemic, but not all countries are equipped with such capabilities. Judging from the situation in New York and Tokyo, even developed countries with relatively abundant medical resources would find it difficult to mobilize a sufficient number of medical staff to offer assistance in time.

What is even more worrying are those developing countries with a severe shortage of medical resources. Leaving Africa aside, even the neighboring Asian developing countries with large populations, like India and Indonesia, have only 0.8 doctors and 0.3 doctors, and 0.5 beds and one bed in medical facilities, per thousand people, respectively. In such countries with scarce medical resources and insufficient capabilities to offer national assistance, the scramble for medical resources caused by epidemic outbreaks may be extremely severe. Therefore, it is extremely urgent to organize global assistance. The problem is that most developed countries are also suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic and can spare no time to take care of others. At this moment, China’s medical assistance to other countries is particularly valuable.

(3) Rapid construction of makeshift hospitals

The city also converted stadiums into 16 makeshift hospitals for treating mild cases, and quickly provided 13,000 beds with antibacterial and epidemic prevention levels up to those of first-class hospitals in China. The move channeled mild cases, helping to concentrate high-end medical resources on severe cases, and alleviated the scramble for medical resources.

The experience of Wuhan—building Huoshenshan, Leishenshan and temporary treatment centers to address bed shortage—is worthy of reference and learning for the world.

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Japan required some confirmed patients to stay at home for quarantine due to insufficient beds, which was actually an extremely dangerous practice. First, it put the family members of the patients at risk and might lead to infections in clusters within the families. Second, patients could not get effective and professional treatment, and without timely update on health conditions, they might not be able to receive swift referral for treatment when the conditions deteriorated. Fortunately, the practice was largely halted later, and Japan now has also transformed facilities like hotels into isolation wards for patients with mild symptoms, in an effort to channel mild cases and relieve the pressure on hospitals.

A more serious problem in Tokyo is the shortage of ICUs. By 2018, Japan had merely 4.3 ICU beds per 100,000 people, and there was a huge gap compared with the 35 in the U.S., 30 in Germany, 11.6 in France, 12.5 in Italy, and 9.7 in Spain.

Tokyo, which had the largest number of infected cases in Japan, had only 764 ICU beds, or only 5.5 per 100,000 people, when the first outbreak took place. Through various efforts, Tokyo addressed the serious shortage of ICU beds and survived the first wave. However, as the second wave arrives in autumn and winter, there will be a shortage again. A proper solution to it is a key to avoiding a potential collapse of its medical system amid an outbreak.

The countries have adopted a variety of measures to address bed shortage during the outbreaks, with the U.S. even sending naval hospital ships to assist[13] and South Korea taking the emergency importation of a “hospital” as a new option. Faced with a desperate shortage of beds amid the outbreak, South Korea imported an entire “Huoshenshan Hospital in slabs” from the Broad Group in China. The prefabricated stainless-steel slabs made up negative pressure isolation wards in South Korea. Equipped with fresh air systems and ozone technologies, the wards have the highest level of protection against cross infection. The project took only two days locally before the wards were put into use.

4. Is there a trade-off between protecting economy and protecting people’s lives?

In the responding policies taken by countries around the world to contain the pandemic, the focal point is how to strike a balance between public health and the economic impact. Through rigorous lockdown measures, China successfully contained COVID-19. China is currently trying hard to maintain the “zero COVID-19 case” situation. China’s COVID-19 response can be called the “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy”.

On the contrary, most Western countries reopened economy when there were still infections, although they had placed various restrictions on people’s activities, such as imposing lockdowns or declaring a state of emergency. The measures taken by those countries can be called the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy”.

The second part of the article will compare the “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy” and the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy” and verify an efficient route to fight against the disease.

(1) China: Prioritizing COVID-19 response

In the aftermath of 2002-2003 SARS, the Chinese government formulated the Regulation on the Urgent Handling of Public Health Emergencies, the National Response Plan for Public Emergencies, and the National Response Plan for Public Health Emergencies, on the basis of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases. In 2007, the Emergency Response Law of the People’s Republic of China was announced, further systemizing the above-mentioned law, regulation and response plans. On Jan. 20, before Wuhan was put into a lockdown, China’s National Health Commission released a statement to classify the novel coronavirus pneumonia as a category B infectious disease under the law on prevention and control of infectious diseases but take preventive and control measures of category A infectious diseases, meaning that the fight against COVID-19 had been launched.

It is exactly because the law, regulation and response plans mentioned above were put into place after the SARS epidemic that China could swiftly impose lockdowns, activate the top-level public health emergency response and take other mandatory measures to curb the novel coronavirus. With a priority placed on epidemic response, mitigation measures would not be altered willfully, regardless of the economic impact. In fact, despite cries for the resumption of production and schools as soon as possible across China, the Chinese government stuck to the requirements for reopening, such as only when there were no new cases.

According to Chart 3, China has done whatever it took in economic terms to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and then resumed normal economic activities soon. Seen in the longer span of time, lockdowns and level II public health emergency response were like strong medicine, but a good therapy to keep the situation under control. It is difficult to keep new case numbers at zero. Therefore, once a new infection case was spotted, China would implement strict restrictions and large-scale COVID-19 testing in the area to prevent the spread of the virus.

Chart 3 Numbers of daily new COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths in China
Note: The number of infection cases in China marked in the chart does not include numbers of asymptomatic cases and imported cases.
Source: China’s National Health Commission

(2) Report 9 and Western countries’ t responses

On March 16, 53 days after Wuhan’s lockdown, British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson and other scientists published “Report 9: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand”. The report predicted that the novel coronavirus would infect eight out of 10 people, with 510,000 deaths in the U.K. over the next four months, if measures were not in place. Even with mitigation measures, such as isolating infected people, home quarantining, and restricting senior people to their homes, there would be still 250,000 deaths in the country. With strict lockdown rules, the death toll could be limited to 20,000[14]. Ferguson told the Science and Technology Committee that the move to balance economy and COVID-19 response while tolerating the spread of the virus to some extent was wrong, noting that lockdown was the only option. On March 23, one week after the report was published, the British government announced a nationwide lockdown, prohibiting residents from going out if not necessary and closing schools and most businesses.

The report projected at most 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. In the light of the report, U.S. President Trump extended the federal social distancing guidelines, which originally expired on March 30, to April 30[15].

British journal Nature published a report titled “The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic” on June 8. The report analyzed the effect of policies rolled out by six countries—China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the U.S. The report estimated that in more than three months from January to April 6, those six countries protected hundreds of millions of people from getting infected, through (1) travel restrictions, (2) social distancing through the cancellations of events and suspensions of educational, commercial and religious activities, (3) quarantines and lockdowns, and (4) additional policies such as emergency declarations[16].

Despite obvious effect, lockdown measures have met a lot of resistance among many people who thought they limited human activities and wrought damage on social and economic activities. Many countries began to lift lockdowns prematurely, after the spread of COVID-19 slowed.

(3) “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy” vs. “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy”

Wuhan’s lockdown was lifted after it met very rigorous requirements. It was only after Wuhan had reported no new cases for the past 16 days that the lockdown was lifted. I think that is the radical “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy”.

The Chinese government issued risk-grading criteria on Feb. 17, classifying counties, cities and districts that report no cases or no new cases in the past 14 days as low-risk areas[17].

After successfully containing the first outbreak, China still went all out to maintain the “zero case” situation across the country. Once a new case was confirmed, strict restrictions and large-scale testing would be implemented immediately to block the spread of COVID-19. For example, after three asymptomatic cases were confirmed in Qingdao of Shandong province on Oct. 11, the city tested its entire population and traced people moving out of the city. By Oct. 16, more than 11 million people had been tested.

Contrary to China, European countries and the U.S. lifted lockdown restrictions very soon, because they were eager to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on their economy. A study by the Germany-based IFO Institute for Economic Research and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research was released on May 13[18]. The study said keeping the Rt (the effective reproduction number, refering to the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person) at 0.75 provides the safest balance between hammering out output and risking a new outburst of infections. In other words, keeping the Rt at 0.75 can minimize the economic costs without jeopardizing the medical objectives. The study is an endorsement of the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy” in the academic circle. However, the report failed to come up with effective measures to keep the Rt at 0.75 in response to the highly contagious virus. Therefore, the golden balance put forward in the report is just a hallow theory. The report provides theoretical backing to the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy” adopted by European countries and the U.S., which was the scourge of later resurgence in those countries.

In fact, new infected cases in Europe have risen sharply since autumn. On Oct. 14, daily new cases increased to 105,000 in Europe, outnumbering Asia’s 103,000. On Oct. 15, new cases of infections in Germany soared to 6,638 in the past 24 hours, reaching a daily level not seen since the start of the pandemic.

Report 9 received a chorus of criticism in the U.K., because people worried about the impact of lockdown restrictions on economy. The report predicted the novel coronavirus would kill 510,000 people in the U.K., if mitigation measures were not in place. As a result of measures like restrictions, deaths in the U.K. had been capped under 43,000 by Oct. 11. Despite obvious effect, U.K. lockdown rules were lifted when there were still cases for fear of an economic downturn. The “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy” led to a surge in infections in the U.K. in autumn, prompting London to upgrade its COVID alert level from medium to high on Oct. 15.

By May 11, 31,000 deaths had been caused by COVID-19 in Italy. However, the country lifted the two-month lockdown in early May to reopen its economy. As Chart 2 shows, in the five months from May 11 to Oct. 11, death rates in Italy dropped from 14% to 4%, meaning that Italy had survived from its medical care system collapse. But the pandemic returned in autumn, after the country adopted the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy”. On Oct. 14, the number of daily new cases climbed to 7,300, the highest since the start of the outbreak in March. In response, Italy had to once again ban dining together, and order restaurants to close before midnight.

On Oct. 25, Spain announced the state of emergency and implemented a curfew to rein in the second outbreak. On Oct. 29, Spain’s parliament voted to keep the country’s state of emergency in place until May 2021.

The outbreak also resurged in France. On Oct. 14, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew starting Oct. 17 in nine cities including Paris and Marseille. On Oct .15, French Prime Minister Jean Castex declared a national state of health emergency starting Oct. 17. On the same day, France reported the number of new daily infections jumped above 30,000, setting a one-day record. On Oct. 30, France began its second nationwide lockdown. On Nov. 6, France registered a record 60,000 plus new cases, triggering more stringent restrictions.

U.S. President Donald Trump said long-term nationwide lockdown is not a solution. In late May, the Trump administration decided to restart economy in all states, regardless of the spreading virus. As case numbers rose sharply, New York had to announce a partial lockdown starting Oct. 4. From Nov. 4, daily new infection numbers in the U.S. kept above 100,000 for many days in a row, repeatedly setting new highs. On Nov. 7, the tally of confirmed cases surpassed 10 million in the U.S., and total deaths reached 242,339.

Those European countries, the U.S. and Japan, which adopted the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy”, had to resort to lockdown measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Table 3 A projection and comparison of real GDP growth rates among countries and regions.
Sources: the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the Cabinet Office of Japan, the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the British Office for National Statistics, the Italian National Institute of Statistics, the Spanish National Statistics Institute, the Federal Statistics Office of Germany, the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, the Bank of Korea, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics of China’s Taiwan, the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The resurging virus in autumn and winter seasons posed daunting challenges to those countries that opted for the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy”. Compared with them, China benefited from its “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy” as all localities across the country resumed economic activities and normal life based on their situations. After the postponed National People’s Congress concluded on May 28, China basically resumed normal economic activities. During the National Day holiday, domestic tourists made 640 million trips. China’s real GDP shrank by 6.8% in the first quarter from a year ago as the coronavirus outbreak seriously impacted its economy. China’s real GDP grew by 3.2% in the second quarter, rebounding from the first quarter’s contraction. The IMF projected that China’s real GDP will grow by 1.9% in 2020.

The economy of Japan, European countries and the U.S., which adopted the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy”, continued to shrink in the second quarter, widening their falls compared with the first quarter. Some countries even exhibited a negative double-digit growth. The IMF projected that those countries will all have a negative economic growth in 2020.

South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, which experienced the test of the SARS outbreak like China, deployed the “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy”. As shown in Chart 3, Vietnam and China’s Taiwan have better economic performance. According to an IMF forecast, Vietnam’s real GDP will grow by 1.6% in 2020, and the real GDP growth of Taiwan province of China will stand at zero. South Korea may see a 1.9% GDP contraction for 2020, which is a smaller drop compared with other Western countries. Singapore’s economy, which is vulnerable to the world’s economic fluctuations due to its heavy reliance on global trade, suffered a great slump in the second quarter.

According to the analysis above, compared with the “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy”, the “Coexisting with COVID-19 Policy”, which was intended to cushion the economic blow from a lockdown, turned out to be a failure that caused a long-term economic gloom.

By Nov. 8, there had been more than 50 million cases of infection globally. The winter outbreak would be worse, with the number of infections soaring. Europe and the U.S. have become the epicenter of the outbreak. I suggest that all countries around the world should take the “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy” when wonder drugs and efficient vaccines are not available, to contain the spread of the virus.

(4) Japan: Swinging between economic growth and COVID-19 response

Japan reported the first confirmed COVID-19 case on Jan. 16, 2020. The first flight of the Japanese government taking 206 Japanese citizens took off in Wuhan and bound for Japan on Jan. 29. On Feb. 13, Japan reported the first COVID-19 death. On Feb. 28, Hokkaido released its announcement of emergency. On March 13, the Diet, or the Japanese Parliament, passed an amendment of a special law to combat COVID-19, including the virus to the list of infectious diseases suitable for the law. The special law stipulates that the government is granted enhanced authority to declare a state of emergency in condition that the COVID-19 epidemic may threaten people’s lives and inflict great losses on society, laying a legal basis for the government to declare a state of emergency.

The Japanese government declared a state of emergency on April 7 with respect to the seven prefectures: Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Osaka, Hyogo, and Fukuoka. On April 16, the state of emergency was expanded to the whole nation. That was a loose requirement aimed at reducing person-to-person contact by at least 70% to 80%, rather than a lockdown targeting at no new local cases. Even so, as shown in Chart 4, the daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Japan plumped immediately, and the declaration of a state of emergency achieved remarkable results in disease prevention and control. As the situation improved, the Japanese government lifted its nationwide state of emergency on May 25. Different from China, Japan reported 20 new cases on that day. The lifting was accompanied by new confirmed cases.

China required that a place must report no new COVID-19 cases for 14 consecutive days before it announced itself to be a low-risk area, but Japan lifted the state of emergency with new cases, which boded that the epidemic may come once again. It turned out that a week after lifting the state, Tokyo had to declare its state of emergency due to the rapid increase of infections, so as to raise the people’s awareness of disease prevention and control amid severe COVID-19 epidemic.

Since July 22, Japan started to carry out the “Go to Travel” campaign to revive tourism and stimulate economy in places except Tokyo. On that day, the new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Japan amounted to 792, 10% more than the peak number in the state of emergency, proving the move to be a temerity regardless of anything. Ten days later, the daily new cases surged to 1,575, a 120% increase over the peak number during the state of emergency.

On Oct. 1, Tokyo was involved into the “Go to Travel” campaign. The number of Tokyo’s new cases reached 284, a rising trend again.

As shown in Table 2, by the end of Oct.11, Japan’s death toll from COVID-19 of every 100,000 people is only 1.3, lower than 66.3 of the U.S., 63 of UK, 59.8 of Italy, 50.1 of France and 11.6 from Germany. In terms of fatality rate, Japan is the lowest among developed countries. It can be said that Japan suffered least of the countries adopting the “coexisting with COVID-19 policy”. However, the winter when influenza virus may rage is coming soon. The flu virus and the COVID-19 virus would pose more challenges to Japan. Meanwhile, Japan’s economy under the long period of “coexisting with COVID-19 policy” has been fettered and sluggish. As shown in Table 3, IMF estimated that the real GDP of Japan may decrease 5.3% in 2020.

Chart 4: Numbers of daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths in Japan
Sources: Database of positive cases of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan, and NHK’s special website for COVID-19 deaths in Japan.

5. ‘Jared M. Diamond Hypothesis’ VS ‘Zhou Muzhi Hypothesis’

The question here is how Japanese people acquired cross-immunity against the novel coronavirus.

6. From global failure to global fight

Infectious diseases were once the most vicious killer of human. For example, the Black Death broke out in 1347 in Sicily caused the death of 25 million people in 20 years. The Spanish flu that broke out in 1918 killed 25 to 40 million people worldwide.

In the past century or so, with the development and popularization of antibacterial drugs and vaccines, most of the infectious diseases once extremely harmful to human health and life such as smallpox, polio, measles, rubella, mumps, tetanus, whooping cough, and diphtheria, have been extinct or under control. After the 1950s, the death toll in developed countries caused by infectious diseases such as pneumonia, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and influenza,, dropped sharply, while chronic diseases like cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, hypertension, and diabetes have become the main causes of death.

The achievements made in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases have increased the average life expectancy of human beings, but the alternation of the main death causes has also shifted the focus of the global medical systems, especially those in developed countries, from infectious diseases to chronic diseases. The consequences are that countries now invest little resources in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, and meanwhile, existing medical resources are mainly concentrated on addressing structural problems of chronic diseases.

From the perspective of existing medical resources, neither the professional background of medical workers, the devices, nor the entire medical system can effectively respond to the outbreak in a timely and effective manner. Therefore, in the fight against the virus, even metropolises with huge medical resources, such as Wuhan, New York, and Tokyo, were caught off guard and paid a heavy price.

As early as in 2015, Bill Gates warned people that investing too little in viral infectious diseases would lead to a global failure. The scourge of the COVID-19 epidemic unfortunately confirmed Bill Gates’ prediction.

7. Explosive technological progress

The current measures of various countries to combat COVID-19, such as national state of emergency, lockdowns of the country and cities, self-discipline when going out, and keeping social distancing, focus on reducing and cutting off people-to-people communication to block the spread of the virus. Although the measures have achieved certain results, they cannot eradicate the virus from the root. Though the epidemic has been controlled by the strong “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy”, the achievements are very weak, and any slack or loophole may trigger a resurgence.

We must rely on the technological progress to return to a safe and secure world. At present, all countries are stepping up the research and development efforts to find wonder drugs and vaccines for COVID-19.

The pandemic has been inspiring the breakthroughs in related technologies. Human beings dare not to say that they have controlled and defeated the virus until they master effective testing methods, wonder drugs and vaccines.

Opportunities also lie in crises. Every global war and crisis in modern society has brought a major transformation and explosive technological progress to mankind. For example, the WWII stimulated the development of the aviation industry and initiated the nuclear industry. The Cold War not only promoted the development of aerospace technology, but also laid the foundation for internet technology. The pandemic not only inspired the breakthroughs of technology but also greatly promoted the digital transformation of human society.

While the tension brought by the pandemic is pushing forward technological progress, it may also explore new technological paths so that those overlooked in the past can stand out. For example, traditional Chinese medicine has played an excellent role in Wuhan’s anti-epidemic process and won global attention. The fight against COVID-19 may become an important opportunity for traditional Chinese medicine to go global.

Ozone is also a technological option that has been neglected due to prejudice. As early as on Feb. 18, I wrote an article appealing for the attention to the performance of ozone in sterilization and advocated the use of ozone in the COVID-19 fight[19]. Experiments in Japan have proved that the possibility of virus transmission through droplets in a closed environment is 17.7 times more than that in a non-closed environment. Therefore, an important anti-epidemic measure of the Japanese government is to call on people to avoid going to confined spaces, densely populated places, and contacting each other closely. If we can make breakthroughs in the research and development of ozone sensors and control the ozone concentration as cheaply and freely like we did in temperature control, we are expected to solve the indoor virus infection problem in the presence of people by using ozone to sterilize and kill the virus, thus freeing people from the fear of contact. The globally concerted efforts in combating the pandemic will surely inspire huge technological progress and upgrade a large number of industries.

8. Globalization will not stop

Countries around the world have been cutting off international personnel exchanges and locking down cites since the global outbreak of COVID-19. Globalization has been instantly stopped. We are inundated with worries about globalization, and doubts and even opposition about metropolitanization.

Indeed, with the further development of globalization, international personnel exchanges have been expanded. The overseas trips worldwide have surged from 400 million 30 years ago to 1.4 billion in 2018.

Against the backdrop of globalization, metropolitanization is the extension of globalization. From 1980 to 2019, 117 cities around the world saw its population increase by more than 2.5 million people, and the increased population amounted to 630 million in total. Particularly, the number of megacities with a population of over 10 million surged to 33 from only five in 1980. And these megacities are mostly centers of international exchanges, and leaders in the world economic and political development. The population of those megacities amounts to over 570 million, accounting for 15.7% of global population.

The virus has been spread worldwide through the dense aviation network and a large number of international personnel exchanges, making COVID-19 a pandemic. Many international metropolises with large populations and extensive international exchanges have been severely stricken by it.

But it must be clear that the real reason for global spread of COVID-19 is not the speed and density of international personnel exchanges, but the long existing neglect towards infectious diseases among human beings.

Actually, the progress of globalization has been accompanied by the threat of spreading infectious diseases from the very beginning. From the Age of Navigation to today, human beings have been fighting against infectious diseases and paid heavy price many times during the period. But due to the achievements in suppressing infectious diseases, many countries and international organizations tended to underrate their threat.

For example, the Global Risks Report 2020 released at the World Economic Forum listed 10 possible global risks for the future 10 years and infectious diseases were not included. In the list of the ten risks of the greatest global impact, infectious diseases only ranked the last.

Unfortunately, contrary to the prediction of the World Economic Forum, the COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented blows to human society at the beginning of 2020.

Most countries and regions that once experienced SARS, such as China, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam, have responded with measures similar to the “Zero COVID-19 Case Policy” and achieved good effects. That is probably thanks to the impressive experience of combating SARS. China has incorporated the experience of combating SARS into laws, regulations and general emergency response plans, and compiled related measures into manuals and guidebooks, which determined a quick launch of effective measures in time amid the COVID-19 outbreak and suppressed the epidemic.[20]

In this sense, we do not need to be pessimistic. COVID-19 has drawn global attention and led to global investment in viral infectious diseases, which will definitely trigger an explosive technological revolution and social change. We will eventually overcome the threat from viral infectious diseases and turn the global failure to a global victory.

The pandemic will not stop globalization and international metropolitanization, but give birth to a better globalization and healthier international metropolises after pains and sufferings.

Kurimoto Kenichi, Zhen Xuehua, and Zhao Jian contributed to data compilation and graphic production in the article.Wen Feng contributed to proofreading.

Endnotes:

[1] Zhou Muzhi, “COVID-19: Why is the medical system in metropolises so vulnerable?” In China.com.cn, Apr. 20, 2020 (http://www.china.com.cn/opinion/think/2020-04/17/content_75944655.htm)

[2] Zhou Muzhi, “COVID-19: Why is the medical system in metropolises so vulnerable?” In China.org.cn, Apr. 21, 2020 (http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2020-04/21/content_75957964.htm?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0).

[3] Zhou Muzhi, “COVID-19: Why is the medical system in metropolises so vulnerable?” In Japanese.China.org.cn, Apr. 21, 2020 (http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2020-04/21/content_75957964.htm?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0).

[4] For information about China Integrated City Index, please refer to 2018 China Integrated City Index: Development Strategy of megalopolises issued by the People’s Publishing House in September 2019.

[5] There was no COVID-19 death in Wuhan after May 11, 2020.

[6] Japan successfully avoided overloaded medical system as COVID-19 testing in the country can only be done after the person has gained a testing approval after medical consultations. However, limited testing has caused delayed quarantine of asymptomatic and moderate cases. Moreover, medical consultations and approval procedures before the testing also increased the work load of medical facilities.

[7] A dinner party attended by 40 trainee doctors from Keio University has caused 18 people tested positive for COVID-19 in March even after the Japanese and Tokyo governments issued guidelines against mass dinner gatherings.

[8] According to information published by ICN on Sept.16, nearly 3 million health care workers were infected by the novel coronavirus by Aug. 14 from data provided by 33 nurse organizations of 32 countries. For more information, please visit https://www.icn.ch/news/new-icn-report-shows-governments-are-failing-prioritize-nurses-number-confirmed-covid-19-nurse.

[9] For details, please refer to the Emergency Notice of the Ministry of Transport on Effectively Preventing and Controlling the Epidemic through Traffic Control in and out of Wuhan on Jan. 23, 2020.

[10] The Response Plan for Public Health Emergencies in Hubei province was deliberated and approved at the 52nd executive meeting of Hubei provincial government on Apr. 22, 2010. It is formulated in accordance with the Emergency Response Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, the Food Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Prevention and Treatment of Occupational Diseases, the Frontier Health and Quarantine Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Regulation on the Urgent Handling of Public Health Emergencies, the National Response Plan for Public Health Emergencies, and the Overall Response Plan for Emergencies in Hubei Province.

[11] Responses to major public health emergencies are divided into four levels. The implementation of the first-level response requires to be organized by the State Council or the health authorities and other relevant departments under it. For details, please refer to the National Response Plan for Public Health Emergencies.

[12] The Chinese government promulgated the Regulation on the Urgent Handling of Public Health Emergencies, on May 7, 2003, and the National Response Plan for Public Health Emergencies on Jan. 8, 2006, based on the experience of combating SARS and in accordance with the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases (coming into force as of Sept. 1, 1989). The National Response Plan for Public Emergencies was formulated based on the aforementioned law, regulation and overall plan. On Aug. 30, 2007, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress approved the Emergency Response Law of the People’s Republic of China, further systemizing the above-mentioned law, regulation and response plans. On Jan. 20, days before the lockdown of Wuhan, the National Health Commission issued its No. 1 announcement of 2020, categorizing the novel coronavirus pneumonia into the Class B infectious diseases stipulated in the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, and adopting prevention and control measures for Class A infectious diseases.

[13] U.S. President Trump deployed the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort to Los Angeles and New York respectively in late March 2020. Both hospital ships have 1,000 hospital beds. Although they are not suitable for patients infected with the novel coronavirus, they can accommodate a large number of patients with common diseases, so that local medical facilities can free up more beds for patients infected with the novel coronavirus.

[14] For details, please refer to Ferguson NM, Laydon D, Nedjati-Gilani G, et al., “Report 9: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand”, in Imperial College London HP , March 16, 2020.（http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/77482）

[15] On March 16, the White House issued the coronavirus guidelines, calling on Americans to practice social distancing; avoid gatherings of more than 10 people; avoid eating and drinking in bars, restaurants, and public food courts; avoid unnecessary trips, shopping or social activities; avoid going to sanatoriums, old people’s homes; encouraging schooling from home across the country. On March 29, Trump extended the federal social distancing guidelines, which originally expired on March 30, to April 30.

[16] For details, please refer to Solomon Hsiang, Daniel Allen, Sébastien Annan-Phan, Kendon Bell, Ian Bolliger, Trinetta Chong, Hannah Druckenmiller, Luna Yue Huang, Andrew Hultgren, Emma Krasovich, Peiley Lau, Jaecheol Lee, Esther Rolf, Jeanette Tseng & Tiffany Wu, “The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic”, in Nature, June 8, 2020.

[17] On Feb. 17, 2020, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council issued guidelines on taking science-based, targeted, region-specific, and multi-level measures on the epidemic prevention and control. The guidelines ordered governments at provincial levels to make dynamic adjustments to the list of high-risk, medium-risk and low-risk areas in their jurisdictions. According to the risk criteria defined in the guidelines, cities, counties and districts with no new confirmed cases in the last 14 days are categorized as low-risk areas. Those with fewer than 50 cases or those with over 50 but without a concentrated outbreak are classified as medium-risk areas, and those with over 50 cases as well as a concentrated outbreak are classified as high-risk areas.

[18] Wohlrabe Klaus, Peichl Andreas, Link Sebastian ,Leiss Felix, Demmelhuber Katrin, “Die Auswirkungen der Coronakrise auf die deutsche Wirtschaft”, in ifo Schnelldienst Digital, No.7, May18, 2020.

[19] Zhou Muzhi, “Ozone: a powerful weapon to combat COVID-19 outbreak” In China.org.cn, Feb. 26, 2020.（http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2020-02/26/content_75747237.htm）

[20] China has turned the experience in combating SARS into laws, regulations, manuals and guidebooks and those are the keys to combating the epidemic. On the contrary, in the U.S., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prepared a guideline for restarting world economic activities, only to be rejected by the Trump administration in the first 10 days of May for being too detailed.

The article was published on China SCIO Online on Dec 3, 2020, and was republished by foreign media, including China Daily, Guangming Daily, as well as today’s headlines and other platforms.

A look at Beijing’s cultural industry from its culture, sports and entertainment radiation

Zhou Muzhi

**The 2020 Beijing Cultural Industry Development Conference is held on Sept. 6, as part of a featured event at the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS). [Photo/China.org.cn]**

Editor’s note:

The 2020 Beijing Cultural Industry Development Conference, organized by the Publicity Department of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee, was held on Sept. 6, as part of a featured event at the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS). Zhou Muzhi, president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute and professor of Tokyo Keizai University, delivered a keynote speech titled “A look at Beijing’s cultural industry development from its culture, sports and entertainment radiation,” giving his insights into the good practices and new challenges of the city’s cultural industry. This article is a further elaboration on the topic based on his speech.

1. 2019 ranking on culture, sports and entertainment radiation of Chinese cities

As part of the China Integrated City Index, the Cloud River Urban Research Institute has released the 2019 ranking on culture, sports and entertainment radiation based on a research of 297 cities at prefecture level or above across China. The top 10 are Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xi’an, Shenzhen and Chongqing. Beijing takes an overwhelming lead in the rank.

The next 10 cities in the top 20 are Changsha, Tianjin, Zhengzhou, Suzhou, Jinan, Shenyang, Harbin, Hefei, Qingdao and Changchun. Following them, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Kunming, Wuxi, Nantong, Taiyuan, Shijiazhuang, Dalian, Nanning, and Nanchang round out the top 30.

**The top 30 of 2019 ranking on culture, sports and entertainment radiation of Chinese cities**

Jointly developed by Cloud River Urban Research Institute and the Development Planning Department of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China Integrated City Index is a system that evaluates growth performance of 297 cities at prefecture level or above across the country. The institute has been publishing the city index annually since 2016. Available in Chinese, Japanese and English, the index measures urban development in three dimensions: the environment, society and economy. Under each dimension lies many indicators that support its sub-dimensions at different layers. The culture, sports and entertainment radiation is a group of indicators supported by 785 data sets, with 29.2% coming from statistical data, 30.8% from satellite remote sensing data, and 40% from internet data.

2. Beijing’s overwhelming lead in cultural and entertainment industry

2019 ranking in culture, sports and entertainment radiation of Chinese cities is composed of three modules: returns and traffic, facilities and human resources. On returns and traffic, total revenues of the cultural and entertainment industry in top 30 cities in the ranking account for 67.9% that of the whole country. That is to say, the top 10% cities account for nearly 70% of the country’s total revenues in the industry. Beijing even takes a staggering 24.8%, or nearly a quarter, of the total revenue, reflecting the city’s overwhelming lead in the cultural industry.

Other statistics in the returns and traffic module follow the same logic. The top 30 cities account for 54.5% of China’s box office, 52% of the total movie attendance, and 46% of the country’s total museum and gallery visits, with Beijing taking 5.7%, 4.5% and 6.9%, respectively.

The top 30 cities also boast 72.3% of all the related facilities or industry assets in China, with Beijing taking over a quarter (26.4%) of the total.

Specifically, the top 30 account for 34.9% of all the theaters, 46.8% of all the galleries, 38.6% of all the museums, 84.2% of all the ancient relics, 37.1% of all the sports venues, and 53.7% of all the public libraries, with Beijing taking 2.7%, 6.4%, 3.4%, 46.6%, 2.7% and 6.6% of them respectively.

On human resources, the top 30 boast 53.3% of all professionals and 48.2% of the business entities and organizations of the cultural and entertainment industry, with Beijing taking 12.8% and 10.4% respectively.

Why Beijing can reap a quarter of the national total revenue in the cultural industry with only 12.8% of all its human resources? The reasons lie in its high quality facilities, which accounted for a quarter of the country’s total, as well as its highly concentrated top talents in the field.

According to statistics, the top 30 cities are home to 95.9% of all the national A-class performing artists, 75.1% of all the A-class art designers, 91.7% of all Mao Dun Literature Prize winners, and 68.3% of Olympic champions, with Beijing taking 63%, 37.2%, 47.9% and 5.7%, respectively.

All the above figures show that Beijing is home to many heavyweights in the cultural and entertainment field. The top talent and the high-quality facilities make Beijing a cultural and entertainment production center in China and give the city overwhelming lead in the culture, sports and entertainment radiation.

3. A comparison of cultural and tourism industries in China and Japan

In March 2018, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism was founded, combining the functions of the China National Tourism Administration and the Ministry of Culture, as part of the country’s effort to promote integrated development of the two industries.

To analyze their integrated development, we found a correlation coefficient of 0.55 between the 2019 ranking of culture, sports and entertainment radiation and inbound tourism. Correlation coefficients are used to measure the strength of the relationship between two variables. The stronger the association between the two variables, the closer the coefficient will incline toward 1, while 0.55 demonstrates a not so close relationship between the two.

Using the same method, we found a high correlation coefficient of 0.82 between the culture, sports and entertainment radiation for 47 prefectures in Japan and the country’s inbound tourism. A coefficient of over 0.8 indicates a very strong association between the two variables. That is to say, Japanese cities with stronger culture, sports and entertainment radiation attract more overseas tourists.

Compared to Japan, China’s culture and tourism industry is not as integrated as its neighbor.

After WWII, Japan built the world’s second largest economy based on manufacturing. In 2003, the Japanese government put forward the idea of making Japan a tourism-based country. That year, the number of inbound tourists was only 5.21 million, ranking 31st in the world.

The country’s tourism industry quickly took off and the number of inbound travel surged under the Abe administration. By 2019, the number of inbound visits surged to 31.88 million.

From 2003 to 2018, the number of inbound tourists in Japan grew by 500%, compared to 110% in Germany, 90% in China and the U.S., 60% in Spain and the U.K., and 20% in France. By 2018, Japan had ranked 11th in the number of inbound tourists, compared to 31st in 2003.

It’s interesting to see that there is a relatively low correlation coefficient of 0.45 between inbound travels and domestic travels in China while a relatively high correlation of 0.87 in that of Japan. A high correlation means that cities popular among inbound tourists is also popular among domestic tourists, while a low correlation is just the opposite.

One reason for the low correlations in China is that many of the inbound visits in Chinese mainland are Chinese compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan who travel frequently in coastal cities in Guangdong and Fujian, which has caused the “decoupling” of inbound and domestic travelers.

4. Manufacturing industry VS IT industry

After analyzing the correlation between the 2019 culture, sports and entertainment radiation and the manufacturing radiation based on 297 cities at prefecture level or above across China, we found a correlation coefficient of 0.43 between the cultural industry and the manufacturing industry, which is relatively low. The analysis of the 2019 culture, sports, entertainment radiation and manufacturing radiation for 47 prefectures in Japan found a coefficient of minus 0.5, showing a mutually exclusive relationship between the two industries. From the comparative analysis of the relationship between the cultural radiation and the manufacturing radiation in China and Japan, we saw that there is no interactive development pattern between the two industries in China or Japan.

In the early years of China’s reform and opening up, provinces and cities across China attracted foreign investment through arts and culture. Art shows and film festivals, for instance, were hosted to attracted foreign investors. Commenting the approach, Zhao Qizheng, who was the first director of the Management Committee of Pudong New Area, criticized that this practice was not feasible, because “men of letters and artists do not invest, and entrepreneurs do not watch shows.” His judgement proved true, given that the economic structure back then was dominated by the manufacturing industry.

However, the relationship between the cultural industry and the IT industry is another picture, as the IT industry serves as the new driving force for the current economy. After analyzing the correlation between the 2019 culture, sports and entertainment radiation and the IT industry radiation of 297 cities at prefecture level or above cities in China, we found a coefficient of 0.94, showing a “complete correlation” relationship. The same analysis of 47 prefectures in Japan showed a correlation coefficient of 0.97 between them, higher than that of China. The analyses concluded that no matter in China or Japan, the IT industry must be located in a city with a strong cultural industry. The development of the two industries is closely related and develop synchronously.

5. Beijing Metropolitan Area VS Tokyo Metropolitan Area

Beijing has the peerless radiation of the cultural industry in China, so Beijing has to look to other top metropolises to find out the gap and then fine-tune its strategy. Today, in the global top metropolises, such as London, New York, Paris and Tokyo, the cultural industry has become a magnet and driving force for the IT industry, the financial industry, scientific and technological innovation, higher education, and corporate headquarters. In the future, Beijing should align itself with the world’s metropolises, build itself into the world’s top cultural and entertainment capital, and lead the development of the national interaction economy.

After comparing the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (hereinafter referred to as Tokyo circle) consisting of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama, and the Beijing Metropolitan Area (hereinafter referred to as Beijing), we found that the area of Beijing is 20% larger than that of Tokyo circle, but the population of Beijing, no matter by measure of permanent resident population or DID (Densely Inhabited District, which is defined as an area with a population of 5,000 or more per square kilometer), is only 60% of that of Tokyo circle. And its GDP is only 30% of that of Tokyo circle. The carbon dioxide emission of Beijing is 20% higher than that of Tokyo circle.

A further analysis found that Beijing’s per capita GDP is only half of that of Tokyo circle, but the per capita carbon dioxide emission is 2.1 times that of Tokyo circle, and the energy consumption per unit GDP is 7.4 times that of Tokyo circle. We concluded that Beijing still lags behind Tokyo in the industrial structure, energy structure, urban structure and lifestyle. Moreover, Beijing has a smaller share of cultural and tourism industries, largely because there is lack of interaction between the two industries. In this sense, Beijing should aim to become a global center of culture and tourism in the future.

In 2019, the number of inbound tourists to Beijing accounted for only 14% of that to Tokyo circle. From 2000 to 2019, the number of inbound tourists to Beijing increased from 2.82 million to 3.77 million, an increase of only 34%. However, during the same period, the number of inbound tourists to Tokyo (excluding Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama counties) increased from 4.18 million to 14.1 million, an increase of 237%, cementing its position as a top destination for tourists around the world.

The huge boon brought by foreign tourists to Tokyo’s economy, lies not only in tourism spending, but also in the exchange between visitors and the interaction economy like the IT industry. Tokyo’s leading position in the IT industry is built on such an interaction.

As the above comparative analysis shows, Tokyo outperforms Beijing in terms of the number and the growth rate of inbound tourists. How to make Beijing more attractive is the key to building Beijing into a cultural and tourism metropolis.

To build a more appealing city, we need to use universal logical, concepts and methods to give insight into its own cultural characteristics.

For example, “eating” is a very important social communication scene in the interaction economy. Almost all the cities with a strong IT industry in the world are destinations for foodies. In fact, “eating well” is also the productivity of communication economy. Beijing is home to many famous restaurants with Chinese characteristics, but the number of the world’s top restaurants in the city is only 10% of that in Tokyo circle. Tokyo (excluding Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama counties) has 219 Michelin-starred restaurants, more than any cities in the world. Moreover, 65% of those star restaurants serve Japanese cuisine, and many of their chefs have studied cooking skills overseas. Exchanges in the field of cooking led to the integration and mutual learning, rather than assimilation, between Japanese cuisine and Western cuisine. One of the main reasons why Japanese food is popular worldwide is that there are many Japanese chefs who have preserved their culture and created their style despite influences of other countries.

To know the world and to make itself known to the world holds the key for Beijing to become a world-class metropolis.

The article was published on China SCIO Online on Sep 29, 2020, and was republished by foreign media, including China net, as well as today’s headlines and other platforms.

What is the future of metropolises after COVID-19 pandemic?

Editor’s note: The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to big cities like New York, London and Tokyo, drawing wide concern over the outlook of international metropolises. How to balance urban development and ecological protection? How to lead a city’s cultural development? Join Professor Zhou Muzhi and Professor Yoshinori Yokoyama as they brainstorm what those big cities have in store.

Introduction of speakers:

Zhou Muzhi, President of Cloud River Urban Research Institute and professor of Tokyo Keizai University. Ph.D. in Economics.

Experience: Visiting researcher of Harvard University, visiting professor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, visiting professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and visiting researcher of the Policy Research Institute, Japanese Ministry of Finance. Also guest research fellow of Japan Environmental Sanitation Center, and independent director of MTI Co., Ltd.

Yoshinori Yokoyama, adviser of the Office of the President, the University of Tokyo, and former director of McKinsey & Company, Inc. Tokyo Office.

Experience: Senior fellow of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry, auditor and member of management committee of Industry Reconstruction Corporation of Japan, guest professor of Hitotsubashi University graduate school, professor of the University of Tokyo, member of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, council member of Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development. Also independent director of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, independent director of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and independent director of ORIX Life Insurance Corporation.

Professor Zhou Muzhi and Yoshinori Yokoyama speak at a seminar.

Globalization grows in tandem with urbanization

Zhou Muzhi: Cities originate from the fairs and thrive on trade and exchanges. In 1950, only two megacities, Tokyo and New York, each had a population over 10 million. By 1970, the Osaka megalopolis had been added to the list. However, the number of megacities has grown from five in 1980 to 33 today. They are mostly hubs for international exchanges that determine the future of world politics and economic development. With a combined population of 570 million, those megacities account for 15.7% of the world’s population of Urban Agglomerations. It is quite worthwhile for us to take a closer look at what’s behind their rapid growth.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: First of all, infrastructures are very important for urban development. Edo, what Tokyo was known for in the Tokugawa period, was built on marshes had an ample supply of water, a very good drainage system and a sound network of canals for the transportation of goods and people. These infrastructures supported the development of Edo that had a population over one million.

Zhou Muzhi: The spring water in Inokashira Park near my home is the source of Kanda River. Tokugawa Ieyasu had indeed put a lot of efforts in finding quality water and building a network of waterways in Edo.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: The most important infrastructure that supports the development of modern Tokyo is the railway system, especially the Yamanote Line. Although the loop line did not adopt new technologies in its construction, it was a successful practice in the world’s urban planning history which widened the central business district (CBD) by creating several activity centers or CBDs like Marunouchi, Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ikebukuro. Compared with most US cities which have only one business district,. Those CBDs are modal change point between Yamanote Line loop and commuter rails. This transportation network increased the diversity of Tokyo’s urban life. multiple CBDs in Tokyo have not only increased the city’s capacity but also its diversity.

Zhou Muzhi: The railway system in Tokyo also contributes to the urban density.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Yes. Los Angeles also has a downtown area, but the density of its urban facilities is low as people movement mostly relies on automobiles. The beauty of Yamanote Loop is its adequate size. It takes one hour to go around. That means it takes less than 30 minutes to move from one point to another, which is psychologically acceptable. In this regards, London Loop is too big and Chicago Loop is too small.

Zhou Muzhi: Improving infrastructures and urban capacity are very important solutions for urban diseases. When the population was around 10 to 20 million, the Tokyo megalopolis already suffered from many problems. But as the population grows to 38 million today, many of the problems have been solved thanks to the city’s investment on high quality infrastructures. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is bound to stimulate investment on healthcare, drainage system, waste treatment and other public health infrastructures.

Of course, the capacity here does not indicate the actual living space but the ability to attract talents and create employment. After the 1980s, globalization and development of megacities are mainly driven by the global supply chain in manufacturing as well as the information technology (IT) revolution. It is fair to say that globalization has been growing in tandem with urbanization.

The 33 megacities in the world are either coastal cities or national capitals. The manufacturing industry in the global supply chain era depends very much on deepwater ports. So it is not surprising that the top 10 cities (Shenzhen, Shanghai, Dongguan, Suzhou, Foshan, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Xiamen) on China’s 2018 manufacturing radiation ranking released by the Cloud River Urban Research Institute are all large container ports. They account for around half of the total volume of China’s export in goods.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Japan’s export-oriented manufacturing industry is also highly concentrated in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya megalopolises. Those cities have good ports facing to the pacific ocean because they have been the destination of cargos. Recently, the Northern part of Kyushu facing to the Eastern China sea, because of the increasing importance of China and intra-Asia trade.

Zhou Muzhi: Compared with manufacturing, the IT industry is more concentrated and converged in big cities and megacities.

As a typical part of the interaction economy, the IT industry needs to grow in an open, inclusive and diversified cultural environment, which coincides with the vibes of most coastal and central cities. Therefore, the top 10 cities in China’s 2018 ranking for IT radiation are Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Ji’nan and Xi’an, which are either major big cities or coastal cities. The employment in IT, the number of IT companies listed on the main board, the SME board, and the second board in those 10 cities account for 53%, 76%, 60% and 81% of the country’s total, respectively.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: The IT industry in the United States first concentrated in Route 128 (Boston’s technology corridor) getting the benefit of intellectual properties of Harvard and MIT, then the Silicon Valley which is close to Stanford and Fairchild Camera, Seattle with Microsoft, then, spread to other international metropolises like the New York City.

Zhou Muzhi: Japan’s IT industry is highly concentrated in Tokyo megalopolis, which boasts 80% of the IT companies listed on the First Section Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

There is an interesting relationship between the manufacturing and IT radiation and urban functions. For example, from the perspective of transportation, manufacturing depends very much on the convenience of container ports, while the IT industry hinges much on airport convenience. Manufacturing radiation has a very high correlation with science & technology radiation and finance radiation, so does IT radiation with catering and hotel radiation as well as culture, sports, and entertainment radiation. What’s also noteworthy is that manufacturing radiation has relatively low correlations with healthcare radiation and higher education radiation, while IT radiation has high correlations with them. This means that people working in the IT industry have higher demands on catering, hotel, culture, entertainment, higher education and healthcare. Big cities with superior facilities in the above areas are more attractive to those talented professionals.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: IT sector is becoming more software intensive. This implies highly talented people are the source of value added. So a city’s amenity and comfort for them and their families is very important. Last year, I contributed an expert’s review to the 2018 China Integrated City Index highlighting a city’s provision for a comfortable life.

‘Satoyama’ style in urban development

Zhou Muzhi: There is always an impulse among the intellectuals to escape the city. As early as 35 years ago, the American futurist Alvin Toffler had depicted what would be like in an information society in his book “The Third Wave”. Many of his predictions have been materialized except those about people working effectively away from the big cities in the information society while enjoying the idyllic lives in the countryside. On the contrary, the information revolution has rather promoted the development of megacities.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: People in the western countries have long been feeling the urge to escape the big cities. But most of them still live there. Because some unique kind of comfort could only be enjoyed in the city. Some fifty years ago, A famous French novelist said that French are farmers, Americans are suburbanites and Japanese are truly urbanites. But, today, many have become urbanites. Even with COVID-19, this urbanization trend will nor reverse inspite of predictions by the so-called intellectuals. Cities are the source of energy which is coming from the interaction of various kind of people.

Zhou Muzhi: Cities, especially big cities, offer jobs, comfortableness and charm that other places could not possibly have. That’s why people still move to cities and are unwilling to leave.

But sometimes urban development does not take into account the importance of nature preservation. This is the key reason why some sensitive intellectuals want to leave the big cities.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: In some sense, the relationship between man and nature is now at a tipping point. The human beings are over-exploiting the nature to an extent that the earth could not possibly recover by itself. In other worlds, we may be killing the nature’s inherent self-adjusting ability. What’s behind the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak is the ecological imbalance and the abnormal distribution of species caused by environmental damages. As animals are the carrier of certain viruses, changes in distribution of the living species, also lead to changes in the generation and transmission of the viruses.

Zhou Muzhi: Over exploitation of the nature and huge CO2 emissions also transformed the global ecosystem.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: I am a bit skeptical about the development of effective vaccine for the corona virus because we have not developed it for HIV and SARS. But, even when specific medicine or vaccines are developed that could help contain coronavirus, the human beings may face deadlier virus in the future because virus is a part of our evolution mechanism according to biologists.

Zhou Muzhi: Therefore, we need to recognize the global threat of infectious diseases. According to the Global Risks Report 2020 released by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the issue of infectious diseases did not even rank among the top 10 risks by likelihood over the next 10 years. Infectious diseases only listed lowest in the rank of top 10 risks by severity of impact over the next 10 years.

Against the WEF’s predictions, the COVID-19 pandemic, unfortunately, turns out to have brought unprecedented challenges to the human society.

Many populous metropolises with close international exchanges were hit hard by the virus, prompting people’s concern over the future of globalization and megacities. We need to recognize that the global spread of the coronavirus is not caused by global movement but people’s long-time ignorance of the threat of infectious diseases. In the future, the international community and international metropolises should better understand viral diseases and increase investment in combating them.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: As I said cities are the source of our energy and innovation to improve our everyday life, we do not have the option to suppress the activities. We have to maintain the spontaneity of urban development. At the same time, we should also transform our way of thinking on the relationship between urban development and nature.

Zhou Muzhi: In Japan, people say “the village is made by god, while the city is made by men.” I think it’s only partially correct. Japan’s countryside is traditionally called “satoyama”, which is described as a rural landscape with human beings and nature co-existing in harmony. It is even more ecologically diverse than pristine mountain forests. My friend Mr. Ono, who is the executive producer for the NHK natural science program, told me that proper human presence or intervention in nature has created a new ecosystem that is richer and more diverse than pristine mountain forests.

Satoyama is actually the integration of man-made landscape with the “god-made” natural world.

However, in modern urban development, people always emphasize too much on man-made landscape and ignore the presence of and interaction with the natural world. They sometimes even excluded natural landscape in urban planning and have turned cities into concrete jungles.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Back in 1915, many trees donated from around the country were replanted in the barren field around Meiji Shrine. Back then, one would never have imagined that a forest would be created in the heart of Tokyo. There used to be a nine-hall golf course in the Tokyo Imperial Palace. But the February 26 Incident in 1936 made Emperor Hirohito very angry, he decided not to play golf any more. The unattended golf course is now developed into a natural habitat of many species such as birds, reptiles and insects. The nature has indeed a very strong recovery capability.

It is ideal to plan for urban development based on the idea of nature restoration, but few people have made such trials.

Zhou Muzhi: A few years ago, I proposed the idea of “Module City” in urban planning when I was chairing the Zhenjiang Ecological New City. By “Module City”, I mean to separate a city of one million population into different sections with each highlighting a certain proportion of ecological space in the man-made environment and then link each section with trams. I remember Mr. Yokoyama also participated in this program.

I hope not only to build satoyama style countryside but also satoyama style cities.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Neither the so-called new towns in the UK after the WW-II nor the Australian capital Canberra based on the functionalist design approach are successful. It is quite hard to build a city with urban charm while seeking for interaction with the nature.

Zhou Muzhi: “Satoyama” actually finds a delicate balance between human intervention and natural restoration. This is a new way of ecological protection that beyond our imagination. The human presence should be moderate and sustainable. In recent years, the rural population in Japan is dwindling. With fewer residents, some “satoyama” countryside, however, turn out to be less ecologically diversified than before.

So it is very important to be discrete in human intervention when designing urban spaces. Another thing we need to pay attention is to set a proper distance between man and nature. Many cities in China have created a lot of green spaces far away from where people work and live, making it hard for them to be close to nature.

Overall planning and layer designing

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Design a new city from scratch is almost impossible even for the most talented urban designers and city planners. A city is a complex and dynamic entity which has many layers, including its ecosystem, water and energy supply, sewage network, supply chain, multiple type of transportation, and culture. They interact with each other constantly. Each layer sometimes covers different size of areas overlapping and integrating with each other and grow and decline constantly.

Those layers are the mixture of hardware and some are software. A city hardware can be designed relatively with logic such as its unique transportation and energy systems to cope with globalization. But, design of software is not easy. It depends on the spontaneity of many people’s activities. The cultural element of a city is especially important. It is the source of unique character and attractiveness of a city. For example, living in New York City and Tokyo is very different because they have different cultures. But in general, they are two very successful international metropolises. It is important to recognize and design a city through its layers.

Zhou Muzhi: Building a master plan before designing its layers is even more important.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Yes. It is necessary for us to discuss how the master plan works for urban development. But, master plan by integrating many layers activities is getting extremely difficult. It should not focus too much only on the physical design of facilities and city scape, but on the core ideas and philosophies to embody and strategies to achieve that .

Zhou Muzhi: Only this kind of master plan can truly guide the layers designing.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: We can design a city’s drainage, energy supply and transportation systems because these are all visible facilities. But it is hard to plan for a city’s invisible elements like its culture.

Zhou Muzhi: Many elements in the cultural layer are decided by the unique characteristics of a region’s cultural orientations. Some may turn to nationalism and some may choose regionalism. The former confronts globalization through its own culture while the latter aims to demonstrate its own regional and cultural features in globalization. Each successful international metropolis has its own choice in cultural orientations.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: A city’s cultural layer needs constant fine-tuning. Any culture has two elements. There are elements which change over time and elements which does not and should not change. This is a difficult issue when you deal with renovation and renewal.

Zhou Muzhi: Right. For example, China has built a lot of new cities and zones in recent years with very good facilities and infrastructures, but their cultural vibe is something that needs constant nurturing. I invited many foreign friends to visit Shenzhen. The city boasts a lot of skyscrapers, but they find it not interesting at all. The city of Guangzhou made them excited because they can easily experience the typical Cantonese history and culture while walking down the streets.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: This is also the case with Nishi-Shinjuku, a Tokyo’s urban sub-center. You cannot feel its charm because it has over control of open space use in the context of discouraging the student revolt which was common all over the world in the late 1960’s. Unfortunately, this kind of control orientation not nurture spontaneous and self-evolving in culture of urban areas. Many buildings have squares and open spaces but no street food venders which are common at night market.

Zhou Muzhi: The cultural element and the ecosystem of a city are constantly evolving in itself. Urban designing and management should promote their cultural and ecological development. A city’s tradition, culture and ecology develop through time and form its own characteristics that its residents take pride in.

The great Italian designer Mario Bellini once told me: A city is not built, destroyed or changed at your disposal. A city is where a community with the same cultural identity live and grow.

Service industries and interaction economy

Zhou Muzhi: Unlike Mr. Yokoyama’s view that the labor productivity ratio in Japan’s service sector is lower than the US level, my understanding is that this is exactly what makes Japan’s service sector so charming. Service industries in the country, such as catering and retail, emphasize on interactions with customers, which can hardly be standardized but help engage customers in enjoyable conversations and help improve the overall service quality of the industries in a steady manner.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: This is like dining in a fancy sushi restaurant. The quality of the dishes themselves is important for the customers, but at the same time, the interactions with the sushi chefs are also an important element of enjoyment. Naturally, you can accommodate a small number of custmers.

Zhou Muzhi: Therefore, when it comes to evaluating different commercial areas these days, we should compare the number of locally owned catering and retail businesses with that of chain brands in the areas. Only those with more locally owned brands can obtain high praises, because businesses doing well in customer interactions are mostly locally owned ones offering customized services.

For example, Kichijoji, the neighborhood where I live, is the most popular block in Japan and is rated the No.1 commercial area in the country. Shops in Kichijoji are mostly operated by self-employed individuals, with an average area much smaller than Tokyo’s average. However, per square meter sales volume in Kichijoji shops is very high, much higher than that of the Disneyland.

Therefore, the standardized approach is not necessarily the only way to take when service businesses aim at pursuing high added value. The interaction economy approach deserves more attention.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Tokyo has more Michelin star restaurants than any other city in the world.

Zhou Muzhi: In the 2018 ranking of Chinese cities on hotel and restaurant radiating capability released by the Cloud River Urban Research Institute, the top 10 cities were Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Sanya, Xi’an, and Xiamen, which are home to 36% of China’s five-star hotels and 77% of the country’s top international restaurants.

A close look at the radiating capability of IT industry and that of hotel and restaurant has demonstrated a “perfect correlation” between them, with the correlation coefficient reaching 0.9. This indicates that, working in a typical industry of the interaction economy, the high-income IT professionals are keen on quality dining experience, and that restaurants are important venues for these professionals to “interact”. Top cities with strong radiating capability of IT industry are all famous for their food. Today, the ability to offer great food has become a major boost to a city’s endeavor in developing its interaction economy.

By contrast, the correlation coefficient of manufacturing radiating capability and hotel and restaurant radiating capability registered only 0.68. Clearly, compared to IT professionals, manufacturing professionals are much less sensitive to delicious food.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Certainly, there is connection between Tokyo

s advanced IT industry and its food. The higher people’s income and the intellectual levels of their work are, the higher the need for interactions will be. The COVID-19 pandemic will not put an end to globalization.

Zhou Muzhi: In that sense, as the hubs for globalization and interaction economy, international metropolises are not likely to suffer irretrievable economic declines. They are bound to recover from the setback and embrace a new era of economic boom.

The article was published on China SCIO Online on June 2, 2020, and was republished by foreign media, including China Daily, Guangming Daily, as well as today’s headlines and other platforms.

How to turn crisis into opportunity amid COVID-19 pandemic

Editor’s note:

Zhou Muzhi, head of Cloud River Urban Research Institute and professor of Tokyo Keizai University, and Yoshinori Yokoyama, an adviser of the Office of the President of the University of Tokyo, weigh in on the prospect of globalization amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction of speakers:

Zhou Muzhi, President of Cloud River Urban Research Institute and professor of Tokyo Keizai University. Ph.D. in Economics.nnExperience: Visiting researcher of Harvard University, visiting professor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, visiting professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and visiting researcher of the Policy Research Institute, Japanese Ministry of Finance. Also guest research fellow of Japan Environmental Sanitation Center, and independent director of MTI Co., Ltd.nnu0026nbsp;nnYoshinori Yokoyama, adviser of the Office of the President, the University of Tokyo, and former director of McKinsey u0026amp; Company, Inc. Tokyo Office.nnExperience: Senior fellow of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry, auditor and member of management committee of Industry Reconstruction Corporation of Japan, guest professor of Hitotsubashi University graduate school, professor of the University of Tokyo, member of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, council member of Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development. Also independent director of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, independent director of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and independent director of ORIX Life Insurance Corporation.

What now for global supply chains

Zhou Muzhi: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on globalization has been a major concern of the international community. Globalization is a multi-dimensional concept, and supply chains are one of the integral aspects of globalization. My prediction 20 years ago was that the global expansion of supply chains would help form global supply chain-based industrial clusters, and then megalopolises, in China’s Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The prediction has been confirmed over the past two decades, as huge global industrial chain-based industrial agglomeration formed in the regions, and the three megalopolises have gradually taken shape and driven China’s social and economic development. What concerns the public most is the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. policies of bringing its manufacturing back, and the impact of the policies on globalization.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: We should pay attention to the concept of “regionalization” when it comes to discussing about the characteristics of “globalization,” as the two are complemental and mutually reinforcing notions as opposed to nationalization which is sometimes a hindrance. This is true with regard to the supply chains.

Zhou Muzhi: In fact, some problems in global supply chains had emerged before the outbreak of COVID-19, as seen in China-U.S. trade frictions. In the past, manufacturing supply chains were confined to one country or even a certain region. For example, Toyota’s supply chains were basically in areas with a radius of 50 kilometers. The global expansion of supply chains coincided with China’s reform and opening up, making China a major beneficiary of the trend. From 2000 to 2019, the export volume of China increased 10 times. The three main drivers of the expansion of global supply chains were information technology revolution, transportation revolution, and the sense of security brought along by the stable world order after the Cold War. Global supply chains broke the deadlock of high labor distribution rate of industrial countries in the West, and changed the mechanism of global wealth creation and distribution.

The Chinese economy has largely benefited from global supply chains to achieve its rapid development. Therefore, in the book “The Chinese Economy: Mechanism of Its Rapid Growth” published in 2007, I used the entire first chapter to explain the relationship between China’s economic development and global supply chains. However, the recent years have witnessed frictions between China and other players on the global supply chains. First, international capital felt uneasy about government intervention. For example, to avoid over-dependence of its supply chains on China, Japan rolled out its “China plus one” policy, which encouraged its companies to build supply chains in countries and regions outside China. The second issue is intellectual property rights, which is one of the focuses in the China-U.S. trade frictions. The third one is the rising costs of labor and land as well as taxation.

Of course, the U.S. and other Western countries are facing with the woes of industrial hollowing-out, which constitutes the important social foundation that helped Donald Trump win the election.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Another issue is China’s rapid rise in global influence and presence. When the concept of globalization was born, I interpreted it as “global Americanization.” However, as China expands its influence on the world stage, the U.S. grows increasingly sensitive in many aspects. I have been proposing regionalization as a measure to counterbalance the process of globalization, and I believe that regionalization, or regionalism, is an idea that favors regional characteristics, but coexists with globalization in a mutually reinforcing fashion. At the same time, we should be fully aware of the nationalist sentiment that goes against globalization.

Respect for intellectual property rights is a constantly evolving process. Today, China already has many strengths in the field of intellectual property rights, and will have a better understanding why it is necessary to protect intellectual property rights in the future.

Zhou Muzhi: The development of global supply chains accelerates the industrial hollowing-out in the old manufacturing base of the U.S., and Donald Trump’s election was in some sense a result of rising nationalism in these Rust Belt states.

During the 40 years of reform and opening up, especially the nearly two decades since China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, China has made tremendous achievements with great efforts and built up confidence in its development. However, China’s confidence seems yet to be appreciated by the rest of the world, and thus, has triggered some negative sentiments in some people. If not properly handled, this mismatch of confidence and negative sentiments may distort China’s relations with the rest of the world.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: In fact, it was not plain sailing for the U.S. and Japan to be accepted by the outside world in the process of their ascent. The U.S. became the largest creditor nation in the world in the 1930s after World War I, before which Europe was the center of the world. It was until the 1950s when the U.S. formed its own distinct style in many fields such as music, arts and architecture, and the number of Nobel Prize winners in the U.S. soared after World War II. Despite of all of this, Americans were called “ugly Americans” for a long time, and Japanese were also called “ugly Japanese” in Europe and America in the 1980s.

Facing this situation, shall we confront it or display complementarity? These two approaches show the difference between narrow nationalist sentiment and regionalism that emphasizes regional characteristics. For example, China has attached great importance to the development of digitalization in recent years, while Japan still fond of the analog world before digitalization. As a result, Japan’s manufacturing industry has a solid foundation, but the labor productivity of its service industry seems to be a bit stagnant. Only very recently with the experience of COVID-19 showed vividly this problem of inertia of old ways of doing things. China made Japan to be aware of that. China and Japan have their own unique characteristics, and possible complementary relationship which are the regionalism advocates.

Zhou Muzhi: Therefore, globalization and regionalism are a pair of complementary relations. However, narrow nationalism goes against and harm globalization. How to curb narrow nationalism and make the world more secured is the key for all countries to maintain and develop the global supply chains and promote globalization.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: In terms of response to COVID-19, putting a country or a city on lockdown is a form of strengthening national intervention, which may lead to the rise of narrow nationalism. Someone would be worried about it, but I think the sentiment would wane sooner or later.

Manufacturing evolves into interaction economy

Zhou Muzhi: Everyone is talking about the U.S. policy of getting manufacturing back. As an economist keeping a close eye on the development of industrial chains, I think that even without Trump’s strong push, the return of the manufacturing industry to the West to some extent will occur naturally.

Historically, the earliest globalization of supply chains started from agriculture. The earliest merchandises for trade between the East and the West in ancient times were agricultural products, such as silk, pepper, cotton, sugar, and tea. Obtaining these agricultural products from other regions was the driving force behind the Great Navigation pushed by Western countries. The globalization of food supply chains has boomed ever since then.

My hometown Hunan is the birthplace of rice civilization and used to be typically a self-sufficient economy, with almost all of the food produced locally or purchased from the surrounding market. The dynamic line of the supply chain in my hometown was short and visible. However, the food supply of Chinese people nowadays has gone beyond regions, rendering its dynamic line invisible and non-traceable.

Japan’s countryside has a typical rice civilization. Its original scenery was very similar to Hunan, and it also depended on typical self-sufficient agriculture. However, calculated by kilocalorie, 60% of Japanese food today is imported.

Although globalization makes food supply more efficient, it has dealt a heavy blow to rural areas, agriculture and farmers of China and Japan depending on small-scale peasant economy. Even under the auspice of the much-maligned protection policy, Japan’s agriculture is in danger of being squeezed by imported food. More importantly, the invisibility of the supply chain makes the hidden risks of food safety non-traceable and uncontrollable.

In recent years, good changes have taken place in Japan’s food supply, as more farmers bypass the intermediate link to sell to consumers directly. Post-war agricultural cooperatives and supermarkets that promoted the scale and efficient supply of agricultural products were skipped directly. “Visible farmers’ agriculture” adds communication, trust, sensibility and quality to agricultural products, which not only improves the value of agricultural products, but also makes agriculture itself more attractive. As a result, the number of female students majoring in agriculture has increased significantly in Japan recently, and more and more young people are going to the countryside.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: In Japan, both agriculture and the fishing industry are exploring a new type of producing and circulating system that interacts with consumers. Some people call this industrial form of production. In other words, fishery is changing from hunting to farming and farming is changing to “manufacturing.” Or, we should not use the word industry which could be replaced with the notion of “social systems.” They are transforming themselves into “food delivery systems” as one of social systems such as medical systems, information systems, transportation systems and financial systems.

Zhou Muzhi: In developed countries, the production and consumption of the manufacturing industry have encountered similar situations. In regard to the supply chain of manufacturing in the past, a high proportion of information exchanged between enterprises was tacit knowledge that must not and cannot be transferred to others. In order to ensure the confidentiality of tacit knowledge and smooth communication, enterprises preferred long-term cooperation and capital support. The relationship between enterprises in the supply chain was pyramidal. Information technology has greatly reduced the proportion of tacit knowledge through standardization and digitalization, and greatly reduced the time and cost of information exchange between enterprises. At the same time, the mode of module production disclosed its design rules, so that global enterprises can participate in the supply chain competition fairly. Therefore, the supply chain can break through the shackles of tacit knowledge and expand globally. The relationship between enterprises in the supply chain has also changed from a close pyramid to a flat network, which provides the preconditions for developing countries to participate in the global supply chains. At the same time, the participation of China and other developing countries has led to a substantial drop in prices of industrial products. This kind of global supply chains which minimizes tacit knowledge is a typical interaction economy.

As the times change, consumers who used to pursue low prices begin to value emotion, personality, and interactivity with manufacturers. The broader background that makes this possible is that the modularization of industrial production has entered a new phase. The precondition for the new industrialization of developing countries is essentially built on the fact that modularized manufacturing enables unskilled workers to take on industrial activities such as assembling, which is the foundation for the globalization of manufacturing chains. Nowadays, modularization in conjunction with personalized design can lead to diversified and personalized small-scale production. Based on modularization, manufacturers and consumers can produce more stylish and personalized products through interaction.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Japan is a leading country in the interactive development of modularization and personalization, or custom design. Building a house is a good example. Traditionally, in Japan, there has been a modular system based on 3 feet by 6 feet module. Today, through the personalized, or custom design featuring interaction between clients and designers/architects, modular production of prefabricated building units and components in factories, and seamless assembly by skilled construction workers on site, it not only achieves efficiency, but also realizes the personalized taste of home owners.

Zhou Muzhi: It was the Japanese manufacturers who first and best combined individualized customization and assembly line production in auto manufacturing.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: The new type of manufacturing supply chain is a new system characterized by interaction between consumers and producers while maintaining the improved efficiency. The return of manufacturing to the U.S. or Japan is certainly not relocating factories, but building a new supply chain system.

Zhou Muzhi: We can imagine that the future manufacturing will realize the global supply of high-tech core modules like semiconductor chips on one hand. On the other hand, on the basis of core modules, users interact with manufacturers to produce personalized end products, and the latter’s dynamic line of supply chains will be short and visible. The current return of manufacturing to developed countries is largely a return to the market, which means getting close to consumers. Even if there was no Donald Trump or the COVID-19 outbreak, the return would still take place, which is a demonstration of manufacturing’s evolution from trading economy to interactional economy.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: As labor cost advantage diminishes in China, and labor cost as percentage of manufacturing cost also diminishes, it is inevitable for some manufacturers to leave China to alleviate an over-dependence in one country. China should be wary of the return of advanced manufacturing to developed countries.

In addition, we need to pay attention to the importance of non-digital accumulation of knowhow and expertise which is difficult, at least for some years to be replaced with current level of so-called AI. For example, the complete digitalization of the production of optical lens is hard to achieve, as it requires exquisite integration accumulated expertise and digital technology. After all, light is not digital outside of quantum mechanics scale. In this regard, Sony, Olympus and other Japanese manufacturers regard the development and inheritance of this kind of expertise in the optical field as their core competitiveness.

Zhou Muzhi: The production of terminal products in the manufacturing industry will become more and more personalized and localized, while the core components and modules are supplied globally.

Therefore, I recently proposed to President of Broad Group Zhang Yue to focus on developing ozone sensors. If the cost of an ozone sensor can be reduced to less than US$100, it can be used in mass quantities in manned space to curb the indoor spread of the novel coronavirus. Moreover, Broad Group is expected to become a global enterprise boasting core components by supplying sensors to ozone equipment manufacturers around the world.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: A similar case in Japan is Murata’s capacitor, which has the largest market share in the world. The company is now the world’s leading manufacturer of key electronic components.

Zhou Muzhi: The interaction economy of manufacturing is essentially the return of some manufacturing industries to the West and the return of market orientation. Therefore, Chin’s manufacturing should recognize this in time, strive to evolve and upgrade, strengthen communication and interaction with the market, and reposition its characteristics in the global supply chains. It is happy to note that China has not only solid manufacturing infrastructure, but also a huge market. We believe that China will blaze a new trail in interaction economy of manufacturing.

Display personality based on knowledge of world

Zhou Muzhi: Engines used to be the key to auto manufacturing. In the age of electrical automobiles, the key has shifted to designs.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Yes, even the sound of closing the car’s door is an important element of design, and it can even affect sales. It is a design parameter called sensuality. Other design parameters are engine sound (quietness has not necessarily the highest value), eye levels of the driver seat (SUVs found that) and so on. The comprehensive design ability of the visible parts and the invisible parts becomes increasingly important, which contains characteristics of cultural heritages. For example, in my opinion, the sofa made by Italians is look ordinary sometimes, but, very comfortable, and it is difficult for Germans to make a sofa more comfortable than an Italian sofa.

Zhou Muzhi: So the chairs and sofas in my home are all the works of Italian designer Mario Bellini, who is my good friend. Recently, in the sensibility field that Europe is good at, Japanese manufacturers have gained international recognition for its products such as white wine, whisky, and chocolate. In the ranking of the most popular enterprises among female graduates in science and engineering, there are many food-related enterprises. Emotional women are willing to go to these enterprises, which is a manifestation of sensibility and culture.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: There are increased international people-to-people exchanges for travel, business, academic exchange and other purposes. Hopefully, this trend enhances inter-cultural flexibility. As I said before, globalism and regionalism can go along with each other. We might need to control the nationalism. Sometimes, it goes against globalism.

Zhou Muzhi: There were 400 million international trips 30 years ago, and the figure soared to 1.4 billion in 2018.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: In my opinion, what deserves notable attention is the exchange of professionals with certain cultural backgrounds, such as architects, designers and even doctors.

Zhou Muzhi: Chefs as well.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Chefs have always made much of traveling after finishing the stage of apprenticeship. They used to be called journeymen to get the broader experience and test their acquired skills during the apprentice period. In the past, young chefs in Japan had to travel to different places and work as hired chefs. When their skills reached a level, they would go back to their hometown and run a restaurant. Now the travel and practice for culinary apprentices and journeymen have been globalized for a long time.

Zhou Muzhi: Several of my friends’ children are studying cooking abroad. Some of them have become top chefs. Some of their fathers are famous professors in universities and some are bosses of listed companies.

Yoshinori Yokoyama: Culinary study abroad has brought about the fusion and mutual learning between Japanese cuisine and Western cuisine, but it hasn’t led to assimilation. One of the important reasons why Japanese cuisine is popular around the world is that many Japanese chefs promote regional characteristics based on their knowledge about the world. For example, they now use various kind of meat which was not common in a very traditional Japanese cuisine.

Zhou Muzhi: Getting to know the world and getting oneself known to the world is what every responsible country and every responsible individual should pursue in the course of globalization.

The article was published on China SCIO Online on Jun 02, 2020, and was republished by foreign media, including China net, as well as today’s headlines and other platforms.

What’s the future for manufacturing amid COVID-19 pandemic?

By Zhou Muzhi, president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute

Editor’s note: Why did the strongest manufacturing cities in China report negative growth in local public budget revenues during the COVID-19 pandemic? How will the traditional development mode of export industries be? What is the future for manufacturing and global supply chains? As the Cloud River Urban Research Institute releases the 2019 ranking on manufacturing radiation of Chinese cities, Professor Zhou Muzhi gives his perspective on the outlook.

Shenzhen, Suzhou and Dongguan top the 2019 manufacturing radiation ranking

As part of the China Integrated City Index, the Cloud River Urban Research Institute has released the 2019 ranking on manufacturing radiation based on a research of 297 cities above prefecture-level across China. The top 10 are Shenzhen, Suzhou, Dongguan, Shanghai, Foshan, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuxi, and Xiamen. Four cities in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta are among the top 10. Other than Chengdu, nine of the 10 cities are big container ports, and the 10 cities’ combined export in goods accounted for 47.7% of the country’s total.

The next 10 cities in the top 20 are Huizhou, Hangzhou, Beijing, Zhongshan, Qingdao, Tianjin, Zhuhai, Quanzhou, Jiaxing, and Nanjing. Following them, Zhengzhou, Jinhua, Yantai, Nantong, Xi’an, Changzhou, Dalian, Shaoxing, Fuzhou, and Taizhou round out the top 30.

The top 30 cities’ export in goods accounted for as much as 74% of the national total. That is to say, the top 10% in the ranking produced nearly three-fourth of the country’s export in goods. Except for Chengdu, Beijing, Zhengzhou, and Xi’an, other cities in the top 30 are all coastal or river ports, underlining the importance of container ports for export industries.

The growth of export industries is closely linked with container transportation. We found high correlations between manufacturing radiation and container port convenience, with a correlation coefficient of 0.7. In 2018, China’s container port throughput accounted for 28.5% of the world’s total. Among the world’s top 10 container ports, China had six.

China’s three major megalopolises — the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the Pearl River Delta region — accounted for 6%, 36.3%, and 24.5% of the national total export in goods, respectively, combining to share 66.9% of the country’s total. The three, especially the latter two, are the driving force of China’s export industries.

The top 30 of 2019 ranking on manufacturing radiation of Chinese cities

Export industries amid COVID-19 pandemic

The year 2019 witnessed escalations of China-U.S. trade frictions and a shaky global supply chain. Under the trade tensions, China’s total volume of export in goods still grew by 5%, according to the General Administration of Customs. Cities higher in the manufacturing radiation ranking clearly played a part in the country’s continued growth.

Since the beginning of 2020, the novel coronavirus has hit the whole world, posing a new challenge to the global supply chains. Some export businesses were shutdown, overseas demand shrank, and some supply chains are broken.

In the first quarter, all the top 10 cities in the manufacturing radiation ranking reported negative growth in local public budget revenue. Six cities, including Shenzhen, Dongguan, Shanghai, Foshan, Chengdu, and Xiamen, had double-digit losses. This indicated that, as the world’s largest exporter of industrial goods, China is facing a huge challenge.

Global industrial chains greatly boost China’s export industries

China’s export industries have benefited from the global expansion of manufacturing supply chains. I predicted 20 years ago that the global expansion of supply chains would help form global supply chain-based industrial clusters, and then megalopolises, in China’s Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The prediction has been confirmed over the past two decades, as huge global industrial chain-based industrial agglomeration formed in the regions, and the three megalopolises have gradually taken shape and driven China’s social and economic development.

In the past, information about transactions between enterprises in the manufacturing supply chains contained a high amount of tacit knowledge that could not be disclosed. Companies valued long-term cooperative relations and the support of capital, so as to ensure the confidentiality of tacit knowledge and smooth communication. The relationship among the enterprises in supply chains was pyramidal. Therefore, manufacturing supply chains were confined to a country or a region. For example, Toyota’s supply chains were basically in areas with a radius of 50 kilometers.

It is through the standardized and digital trend based on information technology that the proportion of tacit knowledge and the time and cost of information exchange between enterprises were greatly reduced. At the same time, modular production, in which design rules were disclosed, allowed global companies to compete in supply chains fairly. Therefore, supply chains were able to break through the constraint of tacit knowledge and extend to the world. The relationship among enterprises in supply chains also changed from a compact pyramid to a flat network, providing a prerequisite for developing countries to engage in global supply chains.

The global expansion of supply chains coincided with China’s reform and opening up, making China a major beneficiary of the trend. Its three main drivers were information technology revolution, transportation revolution, and the sense of security brought along by the stable world order after the Cold War. Global supply chains broke the deadlock of high labor distribution rate of industrial countries in the west, and changed the mechanism of global wealth creation and distribution.

Of course, developing countries led by China contributed to a sharp drop in the prices of industrial products through their participation. Such global supply chains, which minimize tacit knowledge, are classic examples of the transaction economy.

China’s 40 years of reform and opening up can be roughly divided into two stages by its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). The first stage featured efforts in concept changing and economic system reform on the one hand, and those to enter the Western market on the other hand. China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 enabled the country to enter the international free trade system, and the door to international markets opened to China. At the same time, initial results were also achieved in the concept changing and the economic system reform during this period. Therefore, China’s reform and opening up and the world’s free trade system generated enormous energy together. China became the “world’s factory” swiftly, and leapt into the top as the world’s largest exporter in 2009. In contrast to previous economic struggles, China entered a stage of substantial development after joining the WTO. The robust export industries boosted the rapid growth of a large number of Chinese cities.

From 2000 to 2019, the export volume of Germany and the U.S. increased 1.7 times and 1.1 times, respectively, while that of France, the U.K., and Japan only increased by 0.7 times, 0.6 times, and 0.5 times, respectively. During the same period, the total export volume worldwide increased by 1.9 times, demonstrating that the export growth rates of leading industrial countries were all below the global average. In comparison, China’s total export volume was only US$249.2 billion in 2000, but surged to US$2.5 trillion in 2019, 10 times that of 2000. China’s exports accounted for only 3.9% of the world’s total in 2000, but the percentage reached 13.2% in 2009, ranking first in the world.

The vitality unleashed by reform and opening up and the entry into the WTO have brought huge dividends to China’s international trade.

Limits of traditional development mode of export industries

China’s export industries experienced a growth rate and an expansion scale never reached by other countries. While accomplishing extraordinary achievements, China has a structural trade imbalance with the U.S. and other countries. The rapid development of China’s export industries has inevitably resulted in the hollowing-out of industries in Western countries. The woes of the industrial hollowing-out in the U.S. helped Donald Trump to win the election in a sense.

China’s sudden rise in presence has set off alarms among many countries. Intellectual property, for instance, is one of the thorny issues in the China-U.S. trade frictions. For another example, to avoid over-dependence of its supply chain on China, Japan began to roll out its “China plus one” policy, which encouraged its companies to build supply chain in countries and regions outside China.

China’s rising costs of labor, land, the environment, and taxation should not be ignored. The labor costs are a case in point. From the change of the average wage for on-the-job employees in the 10 cities topping the list of manufacturing radiation in 2019, we can see that the average wage in Shanghai increased 9.3 times from 2000 to 2008; 8.5 times, eight times, and 7.5 times in Chengdu, Suzhou, and Wuxi, respectively; and 6.6 times, 6.3 times, 5.7 times, 5.6 times, and 5.1 times in Ningbo, Foshan, Guangzhou, Xiamen, and Dongguan, respectively. Because of a higher base, Shenzhen’s wage rise was the smallest among the 10 cities, with an increase of 4.8 times. It can be seen that China’s labor costs have risen at a fast pace.

In the global supply chains, China’s advantages in labor costs are disappearing fast.

The traditional development mode of export industries has reached its limit, so China’s manufacturing industry needs to evolve to a higher level.

Manufacturing is evolving into interaction economy

A recent buzz is around the U.S. policy of bringing its manufacturing back. I think, even without Trump’s strong push, the return of manufacturing to Western countries will occur naturally to some extent.

With rising manufacturing costs in China, some manufacturing sectors sensitive to profit margins are bound to flee China. China should pay more attention to the new trend of advanced manufacturing returning to developed countries.

The precondition of new industrialization of developing countries is essentially built on the fact that modularized manufacturing enables unskilled workers to take on industrial activities such as assembling, which is the foundation for the globalization of manufacturing chains. However, modularization in conjunction with personalized design nowadays can lead to diversified and personalized small-scale production. Based on modularization, manufacturers and consumers can produce more stylish and personalized products through interaction.

We can imagine that future manufacturing will realize the global supply of high-tech core modules, sensors, and other core components like semiconductor chips. In fact, In Western countries, especially in Japan and the U.S., enterprises have been sharpening their advantages in the development of core modules and components. On the other hand, on the basis of core modules and components, users interact with manufacturers to produce personalized end products, and the latter’s dynamic line of supply chains will be short and visible.

Therefore, the current return of manufacturing to developed countries is largely actually returning to the market, which means getting close to consumers. Manufacturing of terminal products will become more personalized and localized. Even if there was no Donald Trump or the COVID-19 outbreak, the return would still take place, which is a demonstration of manufacturing’s evolution from trading economy to interactional economy.

Therefore, China’s manufacturing should recognize this point in time, take hold of manufacturing’s shift to interaction economy, strive to evolve and upgrade, strengthen communication and interaction with the market, and reposition its specializations in the global supply chain. What is gratifying is that many Chinese cities already have strong manufacturing infrastructures, and possess enormous markets. We believe they will blaze a new trail in the interaction economy of manufacturing, and create a bright future.

Zhou Muzhi is the president of the Cloud River Urban Research Institute and a professor of economics at Tokyo Keizai University.

The article was published on China SCIO Online on May 18, 2020, and was republished by foreign media, including China Daily, as well as today’s headlines and other platforms.

COVID-19: Why is the medical system in metropolises so vulnerable?

By Zhou Muzhi, president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute

Editor’s note: How come the metropolises around the world with concentrated medical resources are so vulnerable to the COVID-19 outbreak? What is the future of globalization and international metropolises? As the Cloud River Urban Research Institute releases the 2019 ranking on health care radiation in Chinese cities, Zhou Muzhi, professor of Tokyo Keizai University and president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute, gives his perspective on the health care system in major cities in the coronavirus crisis.

2019 ranking on health care radiation in Chinese cities

Medical care radiation of Chinese cities in 2019

As part of the China Integrated City Index, the Cloud River Urban Research Institute has released the 2019 ranking on health care radiation based on a research of 297 cities above prefecture-level across China. The top 10 are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Jinan, Zhengzhou, Nanjing and Taiyuan. The following top 20 are Tianjin, Shenyang, Changsha, Xi’an, Kunming, Qingdao, Nanning, Changchun, Chongqing, and Shijiazhuang. And the following top 30 are Urumqi, Shenzhen, Dalian, Fuzhou, Lanzhou, Nanchang, Guiyang, Suzhou, Ningbo and Wenzhou.

Evaluating a city’s medical care radiation mainly focuses on the number of physicians and the 3A-grade hospitals. The top 30 cities account for 15% of the certified physicians, 30% of hospital beds and 45% of 3A-grade hospitals in the country. China’s medical resources, especially the best hospitals, are mainly concentrated in cities higher in the ranking, which serve local residents as well as people from all around China.

One would doubt why cities like Wuhan, with one of the top medical resources, can be so vulnerable to the COVID-19 outbreak and even overwhelmed by the influx of patients？How cities should do to prepare for future epidemics?

A test for the health care system

Wuhan was the first to confront the COVID-19 outbreak. The city climbed one place to the sixth in the 2019 medical care radiation ranking, as it boasts 37 3A-grade hospitals, nearly 40,000 physicians, 54,000 nurses and 95,000 beds. It is hard to expect that a city with such strong health care capacity could be overwhelmed by the coronavirus epidemic.

Other metropolises like New York and Tokyo are equally vulnerable to the pandemic. It seems that the novel coronavirus is testing the medical capability of all global cities.

There are three reasons for the breakdown of the medical care system.

First, overloaded hospitals.

Italy, one of the hardest-hit countries in the pandemic, has a relatively high density of physicians, counting 4 per 1,000 people, but the country still suffers a breakdown in its health care system. In the Lombardy region, the number of infections has quickly risen from 1,000 on March 2, to over 10,000 on March 14, and to over 40,000 by the end of March. As many patients with critical conditions could not be treated in time, the fatality rate in Italy is as high as 13%. By April 15, there had been 16,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Italy, and the death toll was 21,000.

The density of physicians in the U.S., Japan and China was only 2.6, 2.4 and 2 per 1,000 people respectively, much lower than that in Italy.

Wuhan has 4.9 physicians per 1,000 people, while the number in the New York state is 4.6 per 1,000, both higher than their national average. However, the medical care system in both places was still overstretched by the outbreak. By April 16, 83.5% of the COVID-19 deaths in China had happened in Wuhan.

Japan’s capital Tokyo has 3.3 physicians per 1,000 people, lower than the level in Wuhan and the New York State. Therefore, the Japanese government has been trying to avoid overcrowded emergency rooms as a key part of its response to COVID-19. The government advises the residents not to go to the hospital and even strictly limits testing to reduce hospitalization. Japan’s measures are so far effective to reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections and lower the fatality rate as the medical resources are mostly given to those with critical conditions. By April 15, Japans’ fatality rate had been around 2%. By April 10, deaths per 100,000 in Japan had been only 0.07, compared to 33.06 in Spain, 30.25 in Italy, 18.25 in France and 5.04 in the U.S. So far, it is fair to say that Japan has avoided collapse in the medical care system through controlling hospital visits.

However, due to the limit on testing, asymptomatic and mild cases could not be quickly identified, isolated and treated, which brings an underlying problem and casts a shadow to Japan’s COVID-19 response. After the announcement of the state of emergency, Japan adjusted its strategy and started to expand testing.

Second, a drop in the number of medical staff.

A drop in the number of medical staff caused by infections also features in the pandemic outbreaks.

In the early stage of the outbreaks, the countries lacked knowledge of the coronavirus transmission, and medical staff faced a huge risk of infection due to the shortage of protective resources such as masks, protective clothing, and negative pressure wards. Those factors made testing, sampling, intubation, and other medical practices that are inherently at risk of exposure even more dangerous. As a result, the countries have seen a significant decrease in the number of medical staff caused by infections, which exacerbated the shortage of medical staff amid the outbreaks and the scramble for medical resources.

According to the information released by the World Health Organization, data reported by 52 countries showed that 22,073 medical workers had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of April 8. The situation turned out to be even worse. As of April 15, Spain and Italy alone saw 26,672 and 15,000 medical workers infected respectively.

Apart from the risks during the treatment, the extensive isolation and infection resulted from a dinner party of trainee doctors from Keio University Hospital dealt another major blow to the already scarce medical workforce in Tokyo.

The super-transmissible coronavirus has severely threatened the safety of medical staff and weakened medical capabilities, resulting in the collapse of the medical system.

Therefore, it is critical to protect the safety of medical workers during the fight against COVID-19.

Third, a serious shortage of hospital beds.

Since the outbreaks, the countries have experienced a shortage of medical supplies such as face masks, protective clothing, disinfectant, test kits, ventilators, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines, and especially, hospital beds. COVID-19 patients are required to be treated under quarantine to curb the spread of the super-transmissible coronavirus, and severe cases should be treated in intensive care units (ICUs), but general hospitals have been in serious shortage of beds.

In contrast to Tokyo, for every 1,000 people, Italy has a high number of doctors but only 3.2 beds, the U.S. has only 2.8 beds, and New York has only 2.6, even lower than the national average. Obviously, inadequate hospital beds have become a bottleneck that restricts medical institutions from receiving patients and hinders timely treatment.

The figure of China is 4.3, a quarter of that of Japan but higher than that of the U.S. and Italy. Wuhan, in particular, has 95,000 beds, or 8.6 beds per 1,000 people, almost as high as that of Tokyo, but it still suffered from a serious shortage of hospital beds in the early stage of the outbreak.

In fact, the problem is that not all hospital beds are qualified for receiving COVID-19 patients for isolation, and the scramble for medical resources has made the bed shortage even more prominent.

Wuhan rush-built the Huoshenshan Hospital and the Leishenshan Hospital for severe cases under national support. The two hospitals with high isolation levels are equipped with specialized treatment equipment, and 1,000 beds and 1,600 beds, respectively. The city also converted stadiums into 16 temporary treatment centers, and quickly provided 13,000 beds with antibacterial and epidemic prevention levels up to those of first-class hospitals in China. The move channeled mild cases, helped to concentrate high-end medical resources on severe cases, and alleviated the pressure.

The experience of Wuhan—building Huoshenshan, Leishenshan and temporary treatment centers to address bed shortage—is worthy of reference and learning for the world.

Japan now requires some confirmed patients to stay at home for quarantine due to insufficient beds, which is actually an extremely dangerous practice. First, it puts the family members of the patients at risk and may lead to infections in clusters within the families. Second, patients cannot get effective and professional treatment, and without timely update on health conditions, they may not be able to receive swift referral for treatment when the conditions deteriorate.

Therefore, Tokyo is now transforming hotels and convention and exhibition facilities into isolation wards for patients with mild symptoms, in an effort to channel mild cases and relieve the pressure on hospitals. A more serious problem in Tokyo is the shortage of ICUs. Japan has merely five ICU beds per 100,000 people, and there is a huge gap compared with the 35 in the U.S., 30 in Germany, 12 in France, 12 in Italy, and 10 in Spain. Tokyo has only 764 ICU beds, or only 5.5 per 100,000 people. To provide enough beds for severe cases is a key for Tokyo to avoid a potential collapse of the medical system.

The countries have adopted a variety of measures to address bed shortage in affected areas, with the U.S. even sending naval hospital ships to assist. In late March, U.S. President Donald Trump sent USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort hospital ships to Los Angeles and New York, respectively, offering them mobile hospitals on the sea with 1,000 high-class beds each. Though the beds are not necessarily suitable for COVID-19 patients, the hospital ships can alleviate the pressure on general hospitals in beds and leave them more space for treating COVID-19 patients by accepting a large number of patients with common diseases.

The emergency importation of a “hospital” has also become a new option. Struggling with a desperate shortage of beds amid the outbreak, South Korea imported an entire “Huoshenshan Hospital in slabs” from the Broad Group in China. The prefabricated stainless-steel slabs made up negative pressure isolation wards in South Korea. Equipped with fresh air systems and ozone technologies, the wards have the highest level of protection against cross infection. The first phase of the project took only two days locally before the wards were put into use.

From global failure to global fight

Infectious diseases used to be the biggest killer of human beings. For example, the outbreak of Black Death in Sicily in 1347 caused 25 million deaths in Europe over 20 years. The outbreak of Spanish Flu in 1918 killed 25 million to 40 million people worldwide.

With the development and popularization of antibacterial drugs and vaccines over the past hundred years, most of the infectious diseases that once did extreme harm to human health and life, such as smallpox, polio, measles, rubella, mumps, tetanus, pertussis, and diphtheria, are now eliminated or brought under control. The number of deaths from infectious diseases such as pneumonia, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and influenza has decreased dramatically in developed countries since the 1950s, and chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, hypertension, and diabetes have become the main causes of death.

The success in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases has helped to increase the average life expectancy of human beings, but the changes in the main causes of death have prompted the focus of medical systems around the world, particularly in developed countries, to shift from infectious diseases to chronic ones. As a result, countries are now investing too little in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, and existing medical resources are mainly concentrated on dealing with chronic diseases.

From the perspective of existing medical resources, neither the medical personnel in terms of professional background, nor the equipment, nor even the entire medical system can respond to the outbreaks in a timely and effective manner. Therefore, even metropolises with rich medical resources, such as Wuhan, New York, and Tokyo, were caught off guard and paid a heavy price in their confront with COVID-19.

Bill Gates warned the world as early as 2015 that too little investment in infectious diseases caused by viruses would lead to global failure. The scourge of COVID-19 unfortunately confirmed his prediction.

（1）Domestic and international aid

To address the shortage of medical workers and massive job cuts in Wuhan, China relies on its strong mobilization ability to send many medical workers across the country to aid Wuhan. The total number of medical workers sent to Wuhan reached 42,000, which largely alleviated Wuhan’s medical stress.

A country’s ability to aid epidemic-hit area is critical to the fight against COVID-19, but not every country has the ability. As evidenced in New York and Tokyo, even developed countries boasting rich medical resources cannot swiftly mobilize enough medical workers to aid the area hit by the epidemic.

What is more worrying is those developing countries suffering from the shortage of medical resources. Not to mention Africa, India and Indonesia in Asia, for example, have only 0.8 physicians and 0.3 physicians per 1,000 people, respectively, with 0.5 beds and 1 bed per 1,000 people, respectively. In those countries with scarce medical resources and poor national rescue capacity, hospitals will be overstretched during the outbreak, which may lead to a severe disaster. Therefore, how to organize the global rescue force is imminent. The problem is that most of the developed countries themselves are now busy responding to the pandemic，paying little heed to others. China’s medical assistance to other countries is particularly valuable at this moment.

（2）Explosive scientific progress

Measures taken by countries, such as declaring a nationwide emergency state, closing borders, city lockdown, home quarantine, and social distancing, are aimed to substantially reduce or avoid personnel exchanges, and block the spread of the virus. Although those measures have taken effect, they cannot completely wipe out the virus. Therefore, even if the pandemic is contained temporarily, the victory we have won is very fragile, and the virus may come back any time.

To secure the victory, we have to rely on the development of science and technology. Since the outbreak, the U.S. has upgraded six generations of COVID-19 test kits in 12 days, as test time has been shortened from two days to one day, then to six hours, then to 3.5 hours, then to 1.5 hours, and then to five minutes, with an accuracy rate above 95%. Cheap, rapid and accurate testing methods will make large-scale screening possible.

Convenient and simple COVID-19 antibody tests have been available in the U.S., so the U.S. government is mulling over the implementation of COVID-19 antibody tests for its entire population. At the same time, the development of wonder drugs and vaccines for COVID-19 is gearing up around the world.

The pandemic is stimulating the explosive progress of related science and technology. Only when we master the three magic weapons — detection, wonder drugs and vaccines, can we truly control and defeat the coronavirus.

Crisis is also a turning point. Each global war and crisis in modern times brought opportunities and an explosive technological revolution. World War II, for instance, promoted the development of the aviation industry, and opened the door of the nuclear industry. World War II not only gave birth to the development of the aerospace technology, but also laid the foundation for the internet technology.

The urgency of the pandemic will not only accelerate technological progress, but also expand the technological path, making unnoticed technological paths stand out. For example, Traditional Chinese Medicine is gaining global attention because of its role in the fight against COVID-19, which may possibly provide a valuable opportunity for TCM to go global.

Ozone is also a technology path that has been ignored due to prejudice. I called for attention to the disinfection efficacy of ozone in an article published on Feb. 18 and advocated the use of ozone in containing COVID-19. Experiments conducted in Japan have proved that the possibility of virus transmission through droplets in a closed environment is 18.7 times higher than that in an unclosed environment. Therefore, an important strategy of the Japanese government to deal with COVID-19 is to call on its people to avoid the confined environment, crowding and close contact. If a breakthrough can be made in the research and development of ozone sensors to control the concentration of ozone as cheaply and freely as we can control the temperature, we are hopeful to solve the problem of virus infection in indoor space and liberate people from the fear of communication by using ozone to sterilize and kill viruses in the presence of people.

The global fight against the pandemic is bound to trigger a huge leap in science and technology and push for industrial upgrade.

（3）Globalization will not end

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, all countries have been cutting off international personnel exchanges and putting cities on lockdown, and thus the globalization comes to a halt immediately. There will be no shortage of worries about the future of globalization, doubts about large-city-oriented urbanization, and even negative voices.

Indeed, with the further development of globalization, international personnel exchanges have expanded rapidly, and international trips sharply increased from 400 million 30 years ago to 1.4 billion in 2018.

Under the background of globalization, urbanization is unfolding worldwide. From 1980 to 2019, 117 cities saw their net population increase more than 2.5 million. During this period, the total net population increase of these cities was up to 630 million. It is particularly noteworthy that the number of megacities with a population of more than 10 million increased from five in 1980 to 33. Moreover, most of these megacities are the centers of international exchanges, and the metropolises that lead the world’s political and economic development. Their total population is 570 million, accounting for 15.7% of the world’s total population.

The highly dense aviation network and frequent personnel exchanges lead to the spread of COVID-19 around the world, leading to the pandemic. Many international metropolises with a large population and intensive international exchanges have become areas hard hit by the outbreak.

However, it must be clearly understood that the real reason for the global spread of the novel coronavirus is not the speed and density of international personnel exchanges, but the long-term negligence of human beings for the threat of infectious diseases.

In fact, the process of globalization has been accompanied by the threat of the spread of infectious diseases from the very beginning. From the age of great navigation to today, human beings have been playing games with infectious diseases, during which they have paid heavy costs. However, because of the big victory against infectious diseases after the Second World War, the developed countries and world organizations have tended to neglect the threat of infectious diseases for a long time.

The Global Risks Report 2020 released by the World Economic Forum, ranked 10 risks that may occur in the future 10 years, excluding the risk caused by infectious diseases. In a separate ranking, infectious diseases took the last place in the 10 risks that would affect the world most in the future 10 years.

Unfortunately, contrary to the prediction of the World Economy Forum, in the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a big blow to the human society as a whole in an unprecedented way.

At the same time, we are happy to see that the outbreak has pushed the world to pay attention to and invest in virus-infectious diseases, which will definitely lead to an explosive technological revolution and social revolution, and will eventually overcome the threat of viral infectious diseases to human beings, and move toward the global victory.

COVID-19 will not put an end to globalization and metropolitanization, but give birth to better globalization and healthier cosmopolitans after the crisis.

Zhou Muzhi is a professor of Tokyo Keizai University and president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

english.scio.gov.cn丨Updated: April 21, 2020

Ozone: a powerful weapon to combat COVID-19 outbreak

Editor’s note: In the following article, Zhou Muzhi, professor of Tokyo Keizai University and president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute, expounds his views on three questions: Will the epidemic disappear suddenly? Who is behind the “God’s Hand”? What is able to prevent cross infection of the novel coronavirus?

Passengers get off an airplane at Qingdao Liuting International Airport in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province, Feb. 25, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]

1. The earth’s protective shield

Since the recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), I have been discussing with Zhang Yue, president of BROAD Group, on how to use ozone for sanitation purpose. Zhang is among one of the first advocates for ozone’s application, but has failed to draw much attention. I also notice people’s caution against or even ignorance of the ozone use from my discussion with atmospheric scientists as well as based on related research studies. Therefore, it is necessary to take a closer look at the ozone gas in order to reduce misunderstanding and even possibly promote ozone use in combating the current coronavirus outbreak.

The troposphere is the lowest layer of our atmosphere, which starts from ground level all the way extending upward to about 10 kilometers. The temperature generally decreases with the altitude. The next layer up is called the stratosphere, which extends from the top of the troposphere to about 50 kilometers above the ground, with the temperature increasening all the way up. The “infamous” ozone layer is found within the stratosphere, with a concentration of 10 to 20 ppm (parts per million). By absorbing the high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light from the Sun, the ozone layer acts as a shield for some UV damage to the cellular DNA, thus protecting the life on earth.

The time when the ozone layer reaches the current concentration almost coincides with the time when life on earth evolves from the ocean to the land. In other words, the higher level in ozone concentration may play an important role in the colonization of life on land, as a thin ozone layer could only allow for life to exist in the ocean. To put it simply, life or organisms, which formerly only existed in the ocean to shield from the harmful UV radiation, were able to migrate on shore thanks to a higher level of ozone concentration.

It is fair to say that no life can be found on the earth without the protection of the ozone layer.

The use of man-made chemicals in industrial development such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other volatile organic compounds (VOC) is now causing extensive ozone dissociation that could weaken the human’s immune system and increase the risk of skin cancer and cataract. Thus, more attention has been given to the ozone depletion, as some even see it as a major global environmental concern no less than global warming and call for stronger protection for its proper functioning.

Ozone is a gas made up of three oxygen atoms (O3). It is created primarily by ultraviolet radiation. When high-energy ultraviolet rays strike ordinary oxygen molecules (O2), they split the molecule into two single oxygen atoms, known as atomic oxygen. A freed oxygen atom then combines with another oxygen molecule to form a molecule of ozone. As an allotrope of oxygen, the pale blue gas has a distinctively pungent smell. The word ozone comes from the Greek word OZEIN, meaning “to smell.”

High levels of ozone concentration can filter harmless UV radiation, thus acting as a shield to protect the life on the earth.

2. Angel in the sky, devil on the ground?

Ozone not only exists in the stratosphere but is also present at ground level. As oxygen molecules decrease and oxygen atoms increase with higher altitude, the high concentration of the ozone layer is found in the stratosphere while its lower concentration rests at the ground or higher above the atmosphere. That is to say, its concentration peaks at around 10 kilometers above the ground level and then drops in even higher altitude.

In the troposphere near the earth’s surface, the natural concentration of ozone is about 0.02 to 0.06 ppm, which is harmless to the human being. As the concentration level grows, it can cause discomforts to human body and may even be harmful to eyes and the respiratory system. The FDA’s maximum allowed ozone concentration in the air for residential areas is 0.05 ppm ozone by volume; the Japan Society for Occupational Health (JSOH) recommends the Occupational Exposure Limits (OELs) for ozone concentration is 0.1 ppm; while the China National Health Commission has set the safe ozone threshold as 0.1 ppm.

What really made ozone “notoriously famous” is the photochemical smog, which refers to a mixture of pollutants, including primary pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), together with secondary pollutants ozone produced in the chemical reaction of UV ray. Although NOx and VOC are the primary source of photochemical smog, the share of ozone in the smog could reach as high as 90%. So people usually equate photochemical smog pollution with ozone pollution.

Photochemical smog not only stimulates mucosa tissues like eyes and respiratory system, it could also cause sore eyes, headaches, coughing and asthma. It could also inhibit plant growth that leads to crop failure, and even cause more hazards like acid rain and visibility reduction.

Since the industrial revolution, mass emission of NOx has led to an increase of ozone in the troposphere by 300% in the past 100 years. The rapid industrialization and urbanization in East Asia, led by China, has seen growing photochemical smog pollutants like Nox, which also accelerated increase of ozone concentration in the troposphere.

Although the concentration in the troposphere is merely a tenth of that in stratosphere, ozone is still the third largest contributor to global warming among all greenhouse gases, following carbon dioxide and methane.

All the factors above has led to a common belief that ozone is a harmful pollutant in the troposphere, and some even compare it “angel in the sky, devil on the ground.” Several developed countries including Japan has made the observation and prevention of ozone cross-border pollution in the troposphere an important research topic.

However, it should be justified that the ozone in photochemical smog is at an unnaturally high concentration due to man-made pollution, much higher than the normal concentration of ozone in the troposphere. Moreover, unlike pure ozone in nature, photochemical smog consists of a large amount of hazardous pollutants like NOx and VOC. Concentration of ozone in nature varies by season and geography, but generally does not reach levels that can harm the human health. For example, one way ozone is naturally produced is through electrical excitation of oxygen molecules in lightening. Due to ozone’s purification effect, the air is usually more refreshing after thunder and lightning. Another example would be the refreshing air in the coastlines and forest because of high ozone concentration.

Therefore, naturally produced ozone is anything but hazardous. We must recognize the difference between the naturally produced ozone and ozone in the photochemical smog, and should not blame it as a cause for environmental pollution.

Because of insufficient research and studies at this front, we often fail to recognize ozone as a protective shield in the troposphere.

Though harmless to big living creatures, ozone could pose serious threats to microorganisms. As a strong oxidizing agent, ozone has always been inhibiting microbe reproductions, while also acting as a balancing power to ecological equilibrium. Unfortunately, little attention has been given to its role in sanitation.

One reason is that low concentration of ozone was not believed to have sanitation values. According to a Japanese study, however, low concentration of ozone is still able to kill bacteria, viruses and molds, if given enough exposure. It is fair to say that ozone has balanced and inhibited the overgrowth and reproduction of microbes on earth.

Furthermore, naturally produced ozone can also decompose hazardous organics, stimulate the human’s immune system, etc. Some researches even believe that it plays a vital role in reflecting to seasonal changes and controlling body function cycles. All in all, without ozone in the troposphere, the earth would be in a entirely different state, unfit for humanity to survive.

In fact, ozone is beneficial for human and nature in both troposphere and stratosphere. It is the man-made pollution that “demonized” ozone by breaking the natural balance on earth.

3. ‘Hand of God’ conjecture: Ozone dispels epidemic?

SARS raged from the winter of 2002 to the spring of 2003, causing extreme panic in society. However, it suddenly disappeared around May and June, leaving various speculations behind. Coincidentally, most of the airborne viruses, such as the influenza virus, erupt in the autumn and the winter and disappear in the spring and the summer. It seems that there is an invisible “hand of God” driving away the epidemic and saving people.

Most researchers looked for correlations between viruses and temperature/humidity. Taking influenza virus as an example, it is generally believed that the virus can maintain its activity for a long time under the condition of low temperature and humidity, and that its activity will be inhibited as the temperature and humidity increase. However, experiments have shown that everyday temperature changes actually do not affect the virus much, but increasing humidity can effectively increase its death rate.

A hypothesis gradually emerged from the discussion with Zhang Yue: perhaps ozone with germicidal and disinfectant ability is the real “hand of God”?

The ozone concentration changes significantly with the seasons: low in autumn and winter and high in spring and summer. According to observations of the ozone layer by Japan Meteorological Agency, the total amount of ozone for Sapporo, Tsukuba, Kagoshima and Naha – Japanese localities from north to south, generally reaches a peak in February to May, but the peak in the farther north comes earlier and that in the farther south comes later.

The ozone concentration varies from region to region as well. The above observations also show a higher peak concentration in the northern regions and a lower peak concentration in the southern regions. Studies have observed that the total amount of ozone in the earth’s atmosphere changes significantly with latitude: lowest in equatorial regions and highest in northern regions near latitude 60°.

Theoretically, the stronger the ultraviolet rays, the faster the oxygen molecules disassociate. The equatorial regions, where the sun shines the most, are the most prone to producing ozone. However, many factors and complex mechanisms act on ozone concentration. The stronger the ultraviolet rays, the easier it is to either produce ozone or break it down. The rate of ozone disassociation is also related to temperature: the higher the temperature, the faster the disassociation. Earth-scale atmospheric circulation is also one of the factors that cannot be ignored, because it can transport the ozone generated locally to other regions.

The largest source of tropospheric ozone is the ozone layer in the stratosphere. The oxygen produced by plants through photosynthesis and the NOx and VOC emitted out of industrial activities also affect the concentration of tropospheric ozone.

In short, the ozone concentration, which depends on the magical disassociation and polymerization of oxygen molecules and oxygen atoms, shows a pattern of low in autumn and winter and high in spring and summer. Moreover, the higher the temperature, the faster ozone molecules break down. Humidity also matters, and the germicidal ability of ozone would decrease sharply in the dry state. Therefore, here comes the bold conjecture: when the seasons change and the weather turns warmer, the ozone concentration and air humidity would rise, and the “hand of God” would begin to dispel epidemics.

The more rigorous rationale should be that assisted by temperature and humidity, the main force – ozone drives away epidemics as its concentration rises with the seasons. Of course, ultraviolet rays, another killer of microbes, also kills outdoor bacteria and viruses.

If the conjecture is true and ozone is the “hand of God”, then the epidemic caused by novel coronavirus, like SARS and flu, should vanish as ozone levels rise over the seasons, which can be a prospect offering a ray of hope for those suffering from the outbreak.

Certainly, the bold conjecture requires careful verification, and suggestions from different perspectives are more than welcome.

4. Using ozone to kill novel coronavirus

For more than 100 years, ozone, considered a killer of virus in the nature, has been widely used by people for disinfection, sterilization, deodorization, disintoxication, storage, and bleaching thanks to its strong oxidablity.

And because of this, ozone should be adopted as a weapon in the global fight against COVID-19. It has three following attributes.

Full coverage. Ozone created by ozone generators or electrostatic air purifiers can reach every corner of the environment, which can overcome the problem that ultraviolet sterilization can only go straight up and down, leaving some places unsterilized.

High detergency. Oxidizing bacteria and virus is how ozone works, with no poisonous residue. On the contrary, the chemical disinfectant we use now is not only harmful to human body, but also will cause secondary population of poisonous residue. During the current epidemic, the overuse of disinfecting water has been a serious problem that we should pay attention to.

Convenience.Ozone can be produced by simple equipment. The equipment, large or small, can be used for a single room, a large public space, or public transportation modes such as buses, high-speed railways, ships and airplanes.

The effectiveness of ozone in treating bacteria and virus is not only related to its concentration, temperatures, humidity and exposure time, but also related to the strains of bacteria.

According to results of the experiment on how ozone kills SARS virus conducted by the national P3 laboratory headed by Professor Li Zelin, ozone is effective in killing the SARS virus inoculated on green monkey kidney cells, realizing a killing rate of 99.22%. The virus found in Wuhan and SARS virus both belong to the coronavirus. Researchers found that the novel coronavirus is 80% similar to the SARS virus in their genome sequences. It is reasonable to predict that ozone is equally effective in preventing and controlling the new coronavirus.

Ozone, though highly effective for sterilization and disinfection, will cause discomfort, or irritate mucous membranes, when it reaches a certain concentration level. Therefore, it is mainly used in unmanned environment.

If ozone can be used in a human environment to kill the new coronavirus and clean air, it will be a blessing to use it in crowded hospitals, factories, public spaces, closed public transportation, and indoor homes.

Whether ozone can take effect heavily depends on our ability to control its concentration levels. The volatile gas is easy to produce, but difficult to be controlled at a certain level, because of the cost of ozone sensors. Without the real-time test of sensors, it is out of the question to control its concentration.

If ozone can be controlled under a safe level by cheap and effective measures, ozone can be more easily used by people, which will lead to its use in human environment. Therefore, how to dramatically reduce the cost of ozone sensors is the challenge to be addressed at the moment.

Amid the epidemic, it is suggested that we can reasonably heighten standards for indoor ozone levels and try using ozone for disinfection and sterilization in human environment. Fortunately, Zhang Yue has donated ozone-generating purifiers to Huoshenshan Hospital and cubic hospitals, hoping this equipment can play a role in protecting medics’ lives and saving infected patients.

The relationship between ozone and microorganism demonstrates the exquisite balance on living bodies on earth. On the one hand, without the protection of the ozone layer, bacteria and virus cannot be found on earth, and on the other hand, ozone with strong oxidablity will kill bacteria and virus. People’s knowledge of ozone is still far from enough. We should abandon the prejudice of ozone, the over vigilance of ozone, try to solve the puzzle of ozone, and fully explore the characteristics of ozone for human use. We must secure the help of ozone at the time of the new coronavirus epidemic. We must work together to make good use of ozone to defeat the epidemic.

Zhou Muzhi is a professor of Tokyo Keizai University and president of Cloud River Urban Research Institute.

China.org.cn, February 26, 2020

‘Polarization of driving forces’ becomes a big trend for China’s urban development

The spatial structure of China’s economic growth is undergoing profound changes, with urban development showing obvious signs of “concentration” and “divergence.” Various functions are increasingly concentrated in leading cities. The more advanced the function is, the higher the concentration becomes. Meanwhile, the divergence between cities is constantly growing, meaning an increasing “polarization of driving forces.”

Cloud River Urban Research Institute, a think tank specializing in urbanization research, published 12 sets of data regarding top 30 Chinese cities in different rankings in a report titled “China Integrated City Index 2018.” The institute looked at the “polarization of driving forces” by analyzing the performance of 298 cities at the prefecture level and above based on major indicators and the concentration of functions.

1. Top 30 Cities by GDP

The 10 Chinese cities with the best performance in terms of GDP, namely Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin, Suzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan and Hangzhou, account for 23.6% of the country’s total GDP. The top 30 cities by GDP make up 43.5% of the total. In other words, the richest 10% of the 298 cities create more than 40% of the national GDP, and China’s economic growth relies heavily on the top 30 cities.

2. Top 30 Cities by DID Population

Population density is a key indicator for the assessment of urban development. The China Integrated City Index introduced the concept of densely inhabited district (DID) to make an accurate and effective measurement of population density. The concept of DID refers to districts with a population density of more than 5,000 inhabitants per square kilometer.

The top 10 cities by DID population, namely Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Dongguan and Wenzhou, account for 22.8% of the country’s total DID population. The top 30 cities make up for 43.2% of the total. In other words, more than 40% of China’s DID population is concentrated in the most populous 10% of the 298 cities.

It is more noteworthy that the GDP of the 298 cities is highly correlated with their DID population, with a correlation coefficient of 0.93, meaning a “complete correlation.” Furthermore, 26 out of the top 30 cities by GDP are also on the list of the top 30 by DID population (in different positions). All these highlight the importance of DID population. Therefore, Chinese cities need to pay close attention to DID quality and scale.

3. Top 30 Cities with Most Main Board Listed Companies

As to the number of listed companies on the main boards of the Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock markets, enterprises from the top 30 cities account for 69.7% of the country’s total, among which 39.6% are located in the top three cities, namely Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. In other words, the top 10% of the 298 cities are home to nearly 70% of all the Chinese companies listed on the main board.

Main-board listed companies are more and more concentrated in large cities, especially core cities.

4. Top 30 Cities with Most Fortune 500 Chinese Companies

In 1989, China had only three companies listed among the Fortune Global 500. In 2018, the number of Chinese companies on the list reached 105, second only to the 126 of the U.S. In particular, three Chinese companies took spots in the top 10.

Chinese companies on the Fortune Global 500 list are located in 28 cities, while 66.7% are concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Compared with ordinary main-board listed companies, Fortune Global 500 Chinese Companies are more concentrated in the national core cities.

An analysis of the top 30 cities with most main board listed companies and top 30 with most Fortune Global 500 Chinese companies shows that the headquarters of the most outstanding Chinese companies, which serve as the central management in the economy, are highly concentrated in core cities represented by Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

5. Top 30 Cities by Manufacturing Radiation

As to the manufacturing radiation, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Dongguan are followed by Suzhou, Foshan, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Tianjin, Hangzhou and Xiamen to round up the top 10. The 10 cities, all with easy access to large container ports, account for 48.2% of the country’s total exports of goods. The top 30 cities make up 74.9% of the total. In other words, top 10% of the 298 cities contributed to three quarters of the country’s goods exports.

6. Top 30 Cities by IT Industry Radiation

When it comes to the IT industry radiation, the cities occupying the top 10 places are Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Jinan and Xi’an. The 10 cities account for 52.8%, 76.1%, 60% and 81% of the country’s total jobs created by IT industry, IT companies listed on the main board, small and medium-sized enterprises board and growth enterprises market board. The top 30 cities make up 68%, 94%, 78.2% and 91.2% in the above four categories. It is obvious that China’s IT industry is highly concentrated in the leading cities of the ranking.

Most Chinese cities are developing IT as a key industry. However, China’s IT industry, as a matter of fact, is highly concentrated in such cities as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Guangzhou. Compared with manufacturing, IT is far more concentrated and converged in certain cities. In this sense, the cities seeking to develop the IT industry need to carefully study and analyze the necessary requirements.

7. Top 30 Cities by Higher Education Radiation

As to the higher education radiation, Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan are the top three cities, followed by Nanjing, Xi’an, Guangzhou, Changsha, Chengdu, Tianjin and Harbin. The 10 cities account for 69.3% of universities listed in Project 211 and Project 985, and 26.0% of all the students studying in regular universities. The top 30 cities make up 92.8% and 57.1% respectively. China’s higher education resources, especially high quality ones, are highly concentrated in the leading cities of the ranking.

8. Top 30 Cities by Science and Technology Radiation

As to the science and technology radiation, the cities ranking the top 10 are Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Xi’an, Tianjin, Suzhou and Nanjing. These 10 cities account for 36.3% and 33.2% of the country’s human resources in R&D, and patent licenses. The top 30 cities make up 59.8% and 62.6% of the total respectively. It is noticeable that China’s science and technology resources are highly concentrated in the leading cities of the ranking.

It is particularly noteworthy that the top 30 cities also boast higher R&D and commercialization efficiency than other cities.

9. Top 30 Cities by Culture, Sports and Entertainment Radiation

The top 10 cities by culture, sports and entertainment radiation are Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Xi’an and Zhengzhou, which take up 34% of national total box office, and 30.6% of movie and theater attendance, while the top 30 cities account for 57.7% and 54.6% of the national total respectively.

The number represents increasing concentration of resources and consumption in culture, sports and entertainment in top ranking cities.

10. Top 30 Cities Catering and Hotel Radiation

Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu top the catering and hotel radiation ranking, and are followed by Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Sanya, Xi’an and Xiamen. The top 10 in total house 35.7% and 77.1% of China’s five-star hotels and international luxury restaurants, while the top 30 altogether take 61.1% and 91.8% of the country’s total. Therefore, this also represents a high concentration of luxury restaurants and hotels in higher ranking cities.

Based on studies of the China Integrated City Index 2018, Cloud River Research Institute also found very high correlations between IT industry radiation and catering and hotel radiation, with correlation coefficient at 0.9. This may be explained by the fact that communications among high-income and broad-minded IT professionals are often found at dinner tables.

It may be no coincidence that the top seven cities by IT industry radiation, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Guangzhou, are also famous for their food culture, which undoubtedly could contribute to the people’s communications and exchanges.

On the contrary, there is only a 0.68 correlation coefficient between the manufacturing radiation ranking and the catering and hotel radiation ranking, showing smaller gourmet appeal to people in the manufacturing sector compared to those in the IT sector.

11. Top 30 Cities by Container Port Convenience

The top 10 cities by container port convenience, i.e. Shanghai, Shenzhen, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Tianjin, Xiamen, Dalian, Suzhou and Yingkou, altogether account for 82% of the country’s overall container throughput, while the top 30 take 97.8%. In other words, almost all of the country’s container throughput are handled by the top 10% in the port convenience ranking.

Drawing on research findings of 298 cities at prefecture level and above from China Integrated City Index 2018, Cloud River Research Institute also found high correlations between the city’s export volume in goods and the container port throughput, with correlation coefficient at 0.81. Moreover, 24 of the top 30 cities by manufacturing radiation are also among the top 30 cities by container port convenience. This shows that the manufacturing industry, especially those involved in exporting trade, depends heavily on the port environment. In this sense, China’s export-oriented manufacturing is expected to be increasingly concentrated in well-established port cities.

In view of the high correlations between industrial development and port environment, China needs to learn lessons from the inefficient and decentralized industrial development in the past, and explore new ways for high-quality development in the future.

12. Top 30 Cities by Airport Convenience

The top 10 cities by airport convenience, i.e. Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Kunming, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Xi’an and Xiamen, account for a combined 49.9% of the country’s total passenger throughput and 73.5% the cargo throughput, while the top 30 cities took 81.3% and 92.9% respectively. Therefore, the big majority of China’s passenger and logistic flows is highly concentrated in the top 10% cities by airport convenience.

Again, the institute found a high correlation between a city’s IT industry radiation and airport convenience, with correlation coefficient at 0.82. Moreover, 21 cities among the top 30 cities by the IT industry radiation were also among the top 30 cities by airport convenience. This shows that the development of the IT industry hinges much on highly efficient airport facilities, and the industry is expected to further cluster into cities with more convenient airport networks.

Today, China’s GDP, DID population and various other functions are increasingly concentrated in a handful of big cities, megacities, as well as megalopolises, and the trend is getting stronger. Therefore, improving the economic and space structure of these big cities, megacities and megalopolises is key to China’s high-quality development.

english.scio.gov.cn丨Updated: January 6, 2020