Nanjing has all but secured its place among China's 2-trillion-yuan GDP cities by the end of this year, with no suspense remaining on the matter. This year is shaping up to be another major promotion year for multiple Chinese cities. Based on mid-year performance, Xuzhou is poised to cross the trillion-yuan threshold, Shenzhen is set to break 4 trillion yuan without difficulty, and Shanghai is expected to surpass 6 trillion yuan. Now, with the release of Nanjing's data, its climb to 2 trillion yuan by year-end is equally certain. Nanjing continues to perform steadily and predictably in both growth rate and increment, yet this consistent performance is enough to elevate it onto the 2-trillion-yuan platform.
According to the unified accounting results released by the Nanjing Bureau of Statistics late on July 28, the city achieved a regional GDP of 972.907 billion yuan in the first half of the year, representing a year-on-year growth of 5.3% at constant prices. This growth rate outpaced the national average by 0.6 percentage points, placing it at a moderate level among the top ten cities. Furthermore, an increment of 54.989 billion yuan ranked tenth among the top ten cities and 12th nationally. This increment has virtually sealed Nanjing's year-end 2-trillion-yuan milestone. Last year, Nanjing's GDP stood at 1.942878 trillion yuan, leaving a gap of only 57.122 billion yuan to reach 2 trillion. The first-half increment alone has nearly bridged that gap entirely. Based on historical patterns, Nanjing typically performs better in the second half of the year than the first, with full-year increments usually ranging between 80 billion and 90 billion yuan. At that point, all of China's top ten GDP cities will exceed 2 trillion yuan, and the nation will boast 11 cities at this level. With the growing number of trillion-yuan cities, the trillion threshold has become too low to measure urban comprehensive strength, and the bar must be raised—over the next decade, 2 trillion yuan should be regarded as a firm benchmark. Beyond Nanjing, cities such as Ningbo, Tianjin, Qingdao, Wuxi, Changsha, Zhengzhou, Jinan, and Hefei are all expected to sequentially join the 2-trillion club over the coming decade. A decade later, the threshold will again rise to 3 trillion yuan.
Despite the certainty of Nanjing's year-end 2-trillion-yuan promotion, the data reveals that the city's development this year continues to face considerable challenges. From the perspective of the "three carriages"—investment, consumption, and exports—all have lost momentum. In the first half, fixed asset investment in Nanjing fell by 11.8% year-on-year, though it grew by 1.1% when excluding real estate development projects. Total retail sales of consumer goods reached 436.383 billion yuan, down 0.5% year-on-year. Imports and exports totaled 263.21 billion yuan, a 3.6% decrease, with exports at 167.51 billion yuan, down 8.3%. As the chart illustrates, Nanjing was the only city among the top 20 in import-export volume to record negative growth, and its ranking dropped by three places. In fact, Nanjing's foreign trade has faced sustained pressure over recent years. From 2023 to 2025, the city's total goods import-export value declined by 9.3%, 3.6%, and 1.4%, respectively. Imports have fallen for three consecutive years, while exports, after a sharp 11.8% drop in 2023, recovered somewhat in 2024 and 2025. In the first half of 2026, national goods trade grew by 16.9%, and Jiangsu Province surged by 23.9%, with export-oriented cities like Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou maintaining rapid growth—yet Nanjing continued to decline. This indicates that Nanjing is facing not cyclical but structural pressures.
The analysis suggests two primary reasons for this. On one hand, the momentum of leading industries is insufficient. Nanjing's foreign trade has long relied on traditional advantageous sectors such as integrated circuits, chemicals, steel, and automobiles. However, in the past two years, the fastest-growing foreign trade industries—new energy vehicle exports, high-end equipment, lithium batteries, and photovoltaics—have been more concentrated in cities like Suzhou, Changzhou, and Wuxi, and Nanjing has not fully benefited. Meanwhile, Nanjing's foreign-invested electronics manufacturing is smaller in scale than Suzhou's, and private-sector foreign trade activity is weaker than in other southern Jiangsu cities. Against the backdrop of Jiangsu's first-half growth of 27.9% in foreign-invested enterprise imports-exports, 43% in processing trade, and 29.1% in mechanical and electrical product exports, Nanjing has struggled to share in this round of growth dividends. On the other hand, Nanjing is in a period of manufacturing climb. In recent years, Nanjing's GDP, R&D investment, and high-tech industry have continued to grow, but its scientific research advantages have not yet fully translated into export advantages. Emerging industries like software, artificial intelligence, and biomedicine contribute more to R&D, services, and domestic demand than to large-scale goods exports. In other words, Nanjing's innovation capability is strong, but its export capability has not kept pace. While Jiangsu achieves rapid foreign trade growth through advanced manufacturing and processing trade, Nanjing finds itself in a gap period of transitioning from old to new growth drivers—this is the fundamental reason it is the only city among the top 20 in imports-exports with negative growth.
The key question arises: with all three carriages losing momentum, how can Nanjing still achieve a 5.3% growth rate? There are two supporting factors. One is the service sector, which has traditionally been a strength. In the first half, among Nanjing's three major industries, the tertiary sector (broadly services) grew fastest at 6.5%. Within it, leasing and business services, information transmission, software and information technology services, and scientific research and technical services saw added value growth of 12.5%, 10.0%, and 5.1%, respectively. The other is advanced manufacturing, which has been rapidly developing over the past two years. In the first half, Nanjing's above-scale industrial growth reached 4.1%, with high-tech manufacturing added value surging 14.5% year-on-year—10.4 percentage points faster than above-scale industry. Computer and office equipment manufacturing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, medical instrument and equipment manufacturing, and electronics and communication equipment manufacturing grew by 40.5%, 20.8%, 14.0%, and 10.6%, respectively. Production of integrated circuits, new energy vehicles, industrial robots, and service robots increased by 37.2%, 44.1%, 18.8%, and 269.7%, respectively.
Nanjing is taking the right steps. In a previous analysis of Nanjing's push toward 10 million population, it was emphasized that the city has strong comprehensive strength—strong in scientific research, education, consumption, and transportation—but manufacturing is a weak point. Manufacturing, especially advanced manufacturing, is a key force driving GDP growth and an important lever for supporting employment and attracting population. In recent years, Nanjing has fully recognized that scientific research advantages alone are insufficient; it must genuinely transform technological innovation into industrial competitiveness. Therefore, over the past two years, Nanjing has intensively issued a series of policies centered on advanced manufacturing and future industries, and a clear industrial roadmap is emerging. Since 2026, Nanjing has successively released major documents including the "Implementation Plan for Deepening the 'AI+' Action in Nanjing to Build an Upgraded National AI Innovation Application Pilot Zone," the "Nanjing '6G City' Action Plan (2026-2027)," and the "Several Policies on Accelerating the Cultivation of New Quality Productive Forces to Drive High-Quality Development (2026 Edition)," all revolving around a common keyword: advanced manufacturing.
The signals from these policies can be summarized in three directions. First, advanced manufacturing is positioned as the core support for economic growth. Nanjing no longer pursues a "large and comprehensive" industry mix but focuses on building globally competitive industrial clusters. Smart grids, software and information services, integrated circuits, biomedicine, intelligent connected vehicles, intelligent manufacturing equipment, and large aircraft are repeatedly mentioned across policy documents. Among these, smart grids have become Nanjing's most competitive industrial calling card, with industry scale long ranking among the top nationally. Integrated circuits continue to improve through supply chains anchored by TSMC, Xihuazhang, EDA, and others. New energy vehicles and intelligent connected vehicles have become new growth poles in manufacturing, while biomedicine and large aircraft are tasked with cultivating new pillar industries. It is evident that Nanjing is not re-selecting industries but continuously strengthening existing ones—turning advantageous industries into industrial clusters and transforming clusters into global competitive advantages.
Second, artificial intelligence is being genuinely turned into a new productive force for manufacturing. Unlike many cities focusing on large models, Nanjing places greater emphasis on AI implementation. On one hand, it lowers barriers for enterprises to adopt AI through computing vouchers and support for large model and intelligent agent development. On the other hand, it stresses "AI + Manufacturing," driving AI into industrial software, intelligent manufacturing, smart terminals, R&D design, and production management scenarios, making AI a practical production tool in factories rather than staying confined to laboratories. This approach leverages Nanjing's greatest strength—dense universities and research institutes with abundant scientific resources. In the past, the low conversion rate of research achievements was a persistent shortfall. Now, Nanjing hopes to bridge the last mile between technological innovation and industrial innovation through "AI + Industry," converting scientific research advantages into manufacturing advantages.
Third, future industries are being proactively laid out to seize the high ground in the next round of technological revolution. Beyond near-term development, what deserves more attention is Nanjing's layout for future industries. The "6G City Action Plan" aims to capture the high ground in next-generation communication technology, while frontier industries such as brain-computer interfaces, atomic-level manufacturing, advanced semiconductor materials, and synthetic biology are also included in key cultivation targets. These industries are unlikely to contribute to GDP in the short term, but they determine industrial competitiveness over the next decade or two. Nanjing is clearly not content with consolidating existing advantages; it seeks to secure an early position before the next technological revolution arrives, avoiding another missed industrial opportunity.
Beyond directly issuing policies to encourage and support advanced manufacturing development, Nanjing has simultaneously rolled out complementary policies, namely talent attraction measures. On January 4, Nanjing released the "Nanjing Talent Policy 2.0," the "Purple Mountain Talent Plan Ningju Project," and the "Nanjing Youth Talent Housing Voucher Policy." These three documents ultimately aim to achieve a systematic restructuring of human capital around industrial upgrading. The core logic is to transform the "demographic dividend" into an "engineer dividend" and an "innovation dividend." First, Talent Policy 2.0 clearly shifts from "competing on subsidies" to "competing on structure." The policy tilts toward integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, biomedicine, new energy, and new-type software, essentially pre-positioning talent structures for Nanjing's future decade of industrial profiles to avoid the risk of "direction set, talent gap" during industrial upgrading. Second, the "Ningju Project" strengthens the deep binding of high-level talent with industrial chains. It supports not just individuals but "talent + project + enterprise + capital," promoting local conversion of research achievements. This is particularly critical for Nanjing, addressing the long-criticized weakness of "many achievements, weak conversion" and enhancing innovation's traction on industry from the source. Third, the youth talent housing voucher policy appears to be a housing tool but is essentially patient capital for industry. By reducing settlement costs for young technical talent and extending their expected career cycles in Nanjing, it creates conditions for enterprises to cultivate core technical backbone and for the city to accumulate a core engineer workforce. The combination of these three documents signals that Nanjing is moving from "attracting talent" to "using talent well, retaining talent, and forming a positive feedback loop of talent → industry → city," which is the scarcest and most critical underlying capability for industrial upgrading.
With talent policies and industrial policies working in tandem, what Nanjing needs to do in the coming years is to firmly execute them and increase long-cycle patient capital investment to complete the deep restructuring of its industry. By persisting in doing the right things, even under current pressure, the road ahead will only broaden.
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