{"id":337453,"date":"2025-10-28T03:03:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/337453\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T03:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:03:12","slug":"chinas-old-industrial-cities-race-to-reinvent-themselves-in-rapidly-changing-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/337453\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s old industrial cities race to reinvent themselves in rapidly changing economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few areas of China reflect the country\u2019s decades-long economic transformation more vividly than its cities. Rapid development has made villages into dense urban landscapes and already sizeable metro areas into some of the world\u2019s largest population centres. As the rate of urbanisation slows and the country transitions into a new economic era, we explore how select Chinese cities are navigating the change. Read the rest of our series here<\/a>.Once a remote industrial powerhouse forged deep in the mountains of western China, the former \u201csteel capital\u201d Panzihua is trading blast furnaces for wellness resorts as it pushes to align with the nation\u2019s shift from rapid urbanisation to a more \u201cpeople-centred\u201d model<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Built in the 1960s on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the city in Sichuan province drew workers from across the nation to fuel China\u2019s industrial ambitions. Six decades later, its economy, once mirroring Pittsburgh\u2019s in the United States, still relies on the iron ore buried in its hills \u2013 home to Pangang Group, western China\u2019s largest steel enterprise \u2013 even as it pursues a cleaner, more diversified future.<\/p>\n

Today, Panzhihua has a population of about 1.2 million, a broader range of industries and a greener environment. Named after a type of kapok flower, the city is working to avoid a \u201crust belt\u201d-style decline \u2013 though the transition is not without challenges. According to researchers and local residents, it continues to grapple with a narrow industrial base, limited innovation capacity and difficulties attracting talent.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of resource-dependent cities like Panzhihua emerged during an era when urban planning centred on the needs of heavy industry. But as the world\u2019s second-largest economy undergoes a structural transformation<\/a>, many have been forced to rethink their strategies.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina\u2019s many resource-dependent cities \u2013 whether reliant on coal, oil, steel or non-ferrous metals \u2013 were key tools of productivity in the planned economy era. But after decades of development, many face the dilemma of resource depletion,\u201d said Song Yingchang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cPanzhihua is a microcosm of China\u2019s urbanisation shift, from \u2018industry-driven city-building\u2019 to \u2018people-centred\u2019 development,\u201d he added, while cautioning that so far, few cities attempting this transition have achieved complete success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few areas of China reflect the country\u2019s decades-long economic transformation more vividly than its cities. Rapid development has…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":337454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[166746,166745,64,166753,166751,66079,74,166752,79,166747,4345,166748,166744,166749,166750,12099,166743,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-337453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-ashuda-village","9":"tag-bao-hua","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-carnegie-mellon","12":"tag-chen-han","13":"tag-chengdu","14":"tag-china","15":"tag-chinese-academy-of-social-sciences","16":"tag-economy","17":"tag-gaojiaping","18":"tag-houston","19":"tag-jinsha-river","20":"tag-lei-xiaopeng","21":"tag-pangang-group","22":"tag-panzhihua","23":"tag-pittsburgh","24":"tag-sichuan","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115449574517223147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}