Xuzhou, a prefecture-level city in northern Jiangsu long tipped to join China’s “trillion-yuan GDP” club in 2025, has chosen a muted response to the milestone. Its government work report published this month disclosed only a 5.8% real GDP growth target for 2025 and omitted an explicit statement that total output had exceeded one trillion yuan. Local officials followed with a public explanation urging caution: be ‘‘practical and let nature take its course’’ and ‘‘don’t be burdened by a number.’'
The omission has drawn attention precisely because Chinese cities have historically advertised headline economic thresholds as badges of success. The debate over Xuzhou’s stance turns on a technical but important distinction: the 5.8% figure is a real (constant-price) growth rate, not a nominal rate that incorporates inflation, and therefore cannot be used alone to conclude a one-trillion-yuan outcome. Other cities’ disclosures illustrate the gap: Wenzhou reported a 6.1% real increase but a nominal growth nearer 5.1%, showing how headline totals and growth rates can diverge.
Symbolically, a trillion-yuan total remains meaningful despite its diffusion across roughly 30 Chinese cities. For a normal prefecture-level city such as Xuzhou, joining that club would be landmark: it would be the first city of the Huaihai economic zone to reach the scale, strengthen Xuzhou’s claim as a sub-provincial hub, and raise Jiangsu’s tally of trillion-yuan cities to six. Those are tangible markers for regional status, investment attraction and bargaining power in provincial resource allocation.
Yet Xuzhou’s rhetoric — emphasizing substance over optics — echoes a broader shift in Beijing’s urban-development discourse. National policy is moving away from sheer expansion of scale toward ‘‘high-quality development,’’ stressing innovation capacity, residents’ incomes, public services and environmental sustainability. The Central City Work Conference and other recent policy signals endorse a transition from quantity-driven urbanization to stock optimization and quality improvement.
The practical upshot is mixed. Downplaying a headline GDP milestone can be a healthy correction if it reflects a sincere emphasis on structural transformation and people’s wellbeing rather than chasing round-number prestige. At the same time, political economy realities persist: local governments still compete for status, budgetary support and industrial projects, so the temptation to highlight headline successes will not vanish overnight. Reliable confirmation of Xuzhou’s total output must await the statistics bureau’s nominal GDP release.
For external observers — investors, regional planners and policymakers — Xuzhou’s posture is a useful early signal. It suggests that at least some municipal leaders are willing to foreground deeper metrics of competitiveness, but it also raises questions about whether the change is substantive or rhetorical. Watching subsequent budget allocations, industrial upgrading plans and social spending will reveal whether ‘‘don’t be burdened by a number’’ becomes a durable governance choice or a line of prudent public relations.