The 2020 Ranking of Cities’Business Attractiveness that analyses Chinese cities by the concentration of commercial resources, connectivity, urban residents’ activity, diversity of lifestyle, and future potential in 2019 has been published. Chengdu ranked as the No. 1 emerging new first-tier city, followed by Chongqing, and Hangzhou. 

Eastern China's Hefei and southern Foshan have appeared as China's new emerging first-tier cities with boosted competitiveness.

Anhui province's Hefei and Guangdong province's Foshan replaced Kunming and Ningbo among this year's 15 emerging new first-tier cities, according to 2020 Ranking of Cities’ Business Attractiveness compiled by The Rising Lab, the big data project of Yicai Media Group, the owner of Yicai Global. The data is from last year.

During the fifth year of compiling such a list, The Rising Lab gave more consideration to individual choices. Hence, client flow was added as an indicator of the concentration of commercial resources index. The data from Baidu Map was used to depict the increase of cities’ permanent residents. SmartSteps, China Unicom's Big Data service platform also helped to track where most migrant workers went.

The No.1 emerging new first-tier city is Chengdu, followed by Chongqing, and Hangzhou. Wuhan is No.4, but this year's COVID-19-caused shutdowns could change that. Xi'an, Tianjin, Suzhou, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Dongguan, Shenyang, Qingdao followed downs the list.