Major economic provinces have long served as both ballast and pillars of China’s economic stability. On the new journey in the new era, these provinces are rising to the challenge of a complex and shifting external environment, earnestly fulfilling their responsibility to support the national economy. Through concrete measures and steady progress in high-quality development, they are contributing to the country’s overall development, advancing the broader goals of Chinese modernization.

Delivering results through practical action

Adhering to a proactive and action-oriented approach, China’s leading economic provinces have focused their efforts on four critical areas: integrating scientific and technological innovation with industrial upgrading, deepening reform and expanding high-standard opening-up, implementing major national development strategies, and promoting common prosperity for all. With systematic planning, coordinated action, and pragmatic approaches, these provinces are turning central government directives into tangible results.

Jiangsu, an economically developed province straddling rivers and seas, recorded a regional GDP of 13.7 trillion yuan (approximately $1.9 trillion) in 2024—registering the highest growth in the country—and rose to the second place nationwide in terms of regional innovation capacity. Breakthroughs in core technologies and critical components, along with widespread intelligent and digital transformation to facilitate industrial networking, have revitalized traditional industries, expanded emerging sectors, and nurtured future-oriented industries.

Jiangsu now leads or co-leads 14 national advanced manufacturing clusters, the highest number in China. Market expansion efforts yielded a 9.3% year-on-year increase in revenues during the first two months of 2025, while platform upgrades drove a more than 200% year-on-year rise in cross-border e-commerce trade. Jiangsu’s 50-billion-yuan Strategic Emerging Industries Fund made its first direct investment in private tech firms developing embodied artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the province’s pilot free trade zone has generated nearly 450 institutional innovations, with 28 replicated and promoted at the national level.

As China’s largest provincial economy, Guangdong has been a pioneer and testing ground for reform and opening up, playing a vital role in advancing Chinese modernization. Economically, the province has led the nation in GDP for 36 consecutive years, reaching over 14 trillion yuan in 2024. To fulfill its role as an economic anchor, Guangdong has set a growth target of 5% for 2025. To this end, it is leveraging the triple drivers of reform, opening up, and innovation while keeping economic development and high-quality growth as its top priorities.

In 2025, the province has planned to allocate 1 trillion yuan for key construction projects and over 320 billion yuan for industrial initiatives. These funds will be used to accelerate 55 major manufacturing projects, each with investments exceeding 5 billion yuan, and facilitate technological upgrades across more than 10,000 industrial enterprises, with 9,200 manufacturers above the designated size set to undergo digital transformation.

In the broader economic landscape, Shandong ranks as China’s third-largest economy and the foremost in the north, making pivotal contributions through steady economic expansion. Positioning itself as a vanguard in national development, the province is actively forging new frontiers of high-quality growth. By deeply aligning with coordinated regional development strategies, Shandong aspires to become a crucial pole for economic growth in northern China.

At present, Shandong is focusing on key priorities such as developing new quality productive forces tailored to local conditions, advancing reforms in critical sectors, coordinating across-the-board rural revitalization with new urbanization, and fostering a robust private economy to cultivate more competitive market entities. In 2025, Shandong will implement 92 reform initiatives, with 10 identified as major priorities, aiming to unleash new dynamism and vitality. These efforts are steadily driving the province’s economy toward more robust and higher-quality growth.

Zhejiang, a frontrunner in Chinese modernization, bears dual mandates: “becoming a crucial window to comprehensively demonstrate the superiority of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics in the new era” and “building a demonstration zone for common prosperity through high-quality development.” While placing particular emphasis on developing new quality productive forces based on local conditions, it has laid out key measures in areas such as foreign trade, consumption, major projects, key industries and enterprises, and artificial intelligence—each intended to underpin the construction of a common prosperity demonstration zone.

In Sichuan—fifth in economic output nationally and first among central and western provinces—the entire province is mobilized to serve the national development strategy. In Henan, China’s major grain-producing province and strategic hub for coordinated regional development, the people of the Central Plains are striving to lead the rise of central China. Other top 10 GDP provinces—including Hubei, Fujian, and Hunan—are actively identifying and leveraging their key strengths, conscientiously fulfilling their responsibilities, and providing firm support for stabilizing the national economy and advancing high-quality development.

Contributions to national development

Through comprehensive, systematic, and concrete policy measures, the resilience and dynamism of high-quality development in China’s major economic provinces have emerged with remarkable speed. With strong performance in the first quarter of 2025, they have made a substantial and measurable contribution to national development.

According to first-quarter statistics, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang, Sichuan, and Henan recorded regional GDPs of 3.35 trillion yuan, 3.31 trillion yuan, 2.35 trillion yuan, 2.23 trillion yuan, 1.52 trillion yuan, and 1.49 trillion yuan, respectively. Together, these six provinces contributed 14.26 trillion yuan—approximately 44.7% of the national total. In terms of year-on-year growth rates, Shandong and Zhejiang each posted 6%, Jiangsu and Henan followed at 5.9%, and Sichuan reached 5.5%—all surpassing the national average. Broadening the scope to include the top 10 provincial economies, their combined GDP in 2024 reached 82 trillion yuan, accounting for 60.82% of the national figure. In the first quarter of 2025, their aggregate GDP rose to 19.5 trillion yuan, increasing their share to 61.16%.

These leading provinces have remained firmly committed to their development goals, translating central directives into concrete outcomes with both systemic rigor and creative execution. Guided by the combined force of various policy synergies, their economies have sustained steady growth while enhancing overall quality. The momentum behind new quality productive forces remains strong, with market vitality and consumer potential continuing to surge. Through industrial upgrading and technological innovation, they have cultivated new drivers of growth, consolidating and strengthening the foundations of economic stability while continuously opening new avenues for progress—sustaining and reinforcing the positive trajectory of high-quality development.