{"id":309567,"date":"2026-01-29T10:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T10:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/309567\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T10:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T10:07:10","slug":"tale-of-2-megacities-how-did-beijing-and-shanghais-gdps-surpass-5-trillion-yuan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/309567\/","title":{"rendered":"Tale of 2 megacities: how did Beijing and Shanghai\u2019s GDPs surpass 5 trillion yuan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As China\u2019s two largest cities by economic output, Beijing and Shanghai are widely seen as barometers for the country\u2019s broader economic performance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Beijing\u2019s gross domestic product reached 5.2 trillion yuan (US$748 billion), making it the second Chinese city to cross the 5-trillion-yuan mark after Shanghai, which breached the threshold in 2024 and did so again in 2025 with a GDP of 5.67 trillion yuan. Based on last year\u2019s figures, each city\u2019s economic size is comparable to that of a smaller European country, such as Sweden or Belgium.<\/p>\n

In this explainer, the Post examines economic data from both megacities, breaking down what has sustained their growth and how policymakers are positioning them for the next stage of development.<\/p>\n

What sustained the economic growth?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2025, both Beijing and Shanghai posted GDP growth of 5.4 per cent, beating the national average of 5 per cent, according to official data released on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

In Beijing, growth was driven mainly by the information, software and IT services sector and finance, which together accounted for 51.8 per cent of GDP and contributed more than 80 per cent of overall growth, according to the city\u2019s statistics bureau.<\/p>\n

Manufacturing also showed strong momentum in the national capital, with double-digit growth in electric vehicle output and a 47.6 per cent rise in service robot production<\/a>. The city accounted for about one-third of China\u2019s humanoid robotics industry by August, according to Beijing\u2019s mayor, Yin Yong. [3]In Shanghai, services remained the main growth engine, led by finance and the information and IT sector. Meanwhile, hi-tech manufacturing \u2013 including integrated circuits, artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> and new energy \u2013 recorded double-digit output growth, far above the city\u2019s overall industrial growth rate.<\/p>\n

AI firms\u2019 revenues jumped nearly 40 per cent year on year to 435 billion yuan in the first three quarters in Shanghai, official data showed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As China\u2019s two largest cities by economic output, Beijing and Shanghai are widely seen as barometers for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[291,1793,104757,79,381,179,18,51801,1729,30055,19,2599,82635,17,151512,42521,42773,2792,9312,5986],"class_list":{"0":"post-309567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-beijing","10":"tag-biopharma","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-electric-vehicle","16":"tag-finance","17":"tag-gross-domestic-product","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-information","20":"tag-integrated-circuits","21":"tag-ireland","22":"tag-it-services-sector","23":"tag-pudong-district","24":"tag-robotics-industry","25":"tag-shanghai","26":"tag-sweden","27":"tag-tourism"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115977836622637905","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}