Jiangsu

TL;DR

13.7T yuan GDP (2024, #2); closing gap with Guangdong; Suzhou 2.67T yuan (#1 prefecture-level); 5 cities above 1T; 68.7% exports = electronics.

region in China

By Alex Denne

Jiangsu's GDP reached 13.7 trillion yuan in 2024 (+5.8%), ranking #2 nationally with gap to Guangdong narrowing to just 175.76 billion yuan in H1 2025—closest margin in years. Five cities exceeded 1 trillion yuan: Suzhou led at 2.67 trillion yuan (only prefecture-level city above 2T), followed by Nanjing (1.85T), Wuxi (1.62T), Nantong, and Changzhou. Huai'an led growth at 7.1%. Suzhou's total industrial output hit 4.7 trillion yuan, with electronic products composing 68.7% of exports. Jiangsu plans 5%+ GDP growth for 2025 with 1.2 million new jobs. The province is 'more resilient due to diversified industrial structure, lower real estate dependence, and smaller export reliance' than Guangdong. Manufacturing heartland status drives GDP competition with #1 Guangdong. Suzhou ranks among top prefecture-level cities in China for economic output.

Locations in Jiangsu

ChangzhouChina's stealth EV capital—Changzhou produces over 680,000 electric vehicles annually by clustering BYD, Li Auto, and CATL battery operations into a supply chain ecosystem that leapfrogged larger cities.LianyungangLandlocked Kazakhstan's primary seaport — 11,870 km of rail making a Chinese coastal city the proxy coastline for a nation with no ocean access.NanjingChina's knowledge capital — 68 universities, top-5 global research output, ¥1.85 trillion GDP, and a city that has regenerated from destruction ten times across ten dynasties.SuqianJiangsu's poorest city runs on baijiu and JD.com's founder — a salmon who left poverty, built a tech empire, and is pumping nutrients back home.SuzhouA prefecture-level city with a $375 billion economy — sixth in China, larger than Finland's — running on decentralised county-level niche partitioning and a 1994 Singapore governance transplant.TaizhouState-built pharmaceutical zone where 1,300 companies self-organized like a slime mold — the government built the petri dish, but the firms found the shortest path.WuxiChina's 'Whampoa Military Academy' of semiconductors—one 1960 factory trained the engineers who seeded a national chip industry. Third-highest per capita GDP in China, and most foreigners have never heard of it.XuzhouChina's second-largest railway hub sits in the only low-elevation gap between four provinces—Xuzhou has controlled this junction since the Han dynasty, and its $125 billion economy still depends on being the place everything passes through.YanchengA 2,100-year salt city turned UNESCO wetland — the most critical feeding stop for over 20 million migratory birds on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, with zero redundancy in the network.