Employees are busy at a workshop of Galaxis Technology in Nanhu District of Jiaxing, east China's Zhejiang Province, Feb. 25, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
Having long propelled China's economic ascent, major provincial-level regions are now leading the charge in the country's transformative shift toward high-quality development.
China's top 10 provincial economic heavyweights, including Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang and Sichuan, accounted for over 60 percent of the country's GDP, despite covering less than 20 percent of its land area.
Their development is redefining China's economic landscape and providing insights into how the world's second-largest economy navigates domestic and global challenges in the final year of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) to lay a strong foundation for the next five years and beyond.
Innovation as the new driving force
From artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and brain-computer interfaces to innovative drugs, China's economic powerhouses are doubling down on sci-tech innovation, yielding significant results in high-tech sectors.
A prime example is east China's Zhejiang Province, where the capital city, Hangzhou, has emerged as the country's hottest new tech hub. It has successfully nurtured a wave of cutting-edge companies known as the "Six Little Dragons," including the globally trending startups DeepSeek and Unitree Robotics.
Hangzhou's rise into an emerging tech hub is no coincidence. Experts and analysts attributed its success to years of groundwork, driven by the city's deep talent pool, a robust industrial ecosystem, strong policy support, a business-friendly environment, and visionary economic governance.
In Zhejiang's 2025 government work report, the province vowed to further cultivate new quality productive forces this year, foster emerging industries, plan for future industries, and promote the deep integration of the digital economy with the real economy.