On May 21st, Walton Institute of Economic Research (WIE) officially released the "2021 China's Strongest Cities Ranking" in Beijing. For seven consecutive years since 2015, Walton Institute of Economics has organized the annual "China's Top 100 Cities Ranking".

The list takes the top 110 prefectural-level cities and above in terms of total GDP as the annual finalists, and ranks them according to the combined scores of their hard economic indicators (weighted at 0.618) and soft economic indicators (weighted at 0.382), and takes the top 100 as the top 100 cities on the list for the year. Hard economic indicators consist of GDP, savings and finance, while soft economic indicators consist of environment, science and education, culture and health. The score of each individual indicator is a combination of its total volume score (weight 0.5) and per capita volume score (weight 0.5).

Determining the annual list of shortlisted cities according to the total GDP indicator advocates that cities should be constantly bigger, adding the per capita indicator advocates that cities should be constantly stronger, and taking into account the soft economic indicators advocates that cities should be constantly better, and "bigger, stronger, better" focuses on "five civilizations construction" and "five civilizations construction". "Bigger, Stronger, Better" focuses on the guidance and incentives of the "Five Civilizations" and the "Five Development Concepts", and can more comprehensively and scientifically measure a city's comprehensive development in the areas of economy, society, science and education, culture and ecology.

In the "Top 100 Cities in China 2021", Beijing and Shanghai ranked the top two, with 94.72 and 90.31 respectively, while Shenzhen (82.14), Guangzhou (80.36), Hangzhou (77.27), Nanjing (76.91), Suzhou (74.52), Chengdu (72.52), and Shanghai (74.53) were the top ten cities. 74.52), Chengdu (72.23), Wuhan (70.55) and Wuxi (67.40). This year, Binzhou, Yibin and Ningde are newly ranked among the top 100 cities, while Jiaozuo, Daqing and Zhanjiang are out of the top 100 cities.