3 Ningbo county-level areas make China's top 100 county list

Three county-level areas from Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province made the 2022 list of the top 100 counties in China, according to a recent report. 

The report, which was released by CCID Consulting, a firm affiliated with a think tank under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, evaluated 1,879 county-level administrative regions in China based on four aspects: economic strength, growth potential, overall wealth, and green development.

Cixi, a county-level city in Ningbo, was ranked sixth on the list, the same as the previous year, while the county-level city of Yuyao fell one spot to 13th and Ninghai county rose four spots to 48th.

Cixi, the highest ranked county-level area from Zhejiang on the list, had a gross domestic product of 237.91 billion yuan ($36.6 billion) in 2021, up 8.4 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, the economic output of Yuyao and Ninghai hit 144.15 billion yuan and 84.01 billion yuan respectively last year.

Eighteen counties or county-level cities from Zhejiang made the list, second only behind Jiangsu province, which took up 25 spots in the top 100 and six places in the top 10.

In 2021, the top 100 counties, which account for less than 2 percent of China's land and 7 percent of its population, generated 9.94 percent of the country's GDP.

Among them, 43 had GDPs exceeding 100 billion yuan in 2021, five more than the previous year, the report stated.