Shenyang in China Selected as a 'National-Level City Cluster'... First City in the Three Northeastern Provinces

Shenyang, the capital city of Liaoning Province in northeastern China, has been designated as a 'national-level metropolitan area.'

Local media, including the Maeil Business Newspaper, reported on the 14th that Shenyang has been designated as a 'national-level metropolitan area.'

A 'metropolitan area' refers to an urbanized space developed by grouping a super-large city or a metropolitan area with strong radial expansion within a one-hour commuting zone into a unified living and economic zone.

The Shenyang metropolitan area, centered on Shenyang, includes six cities such as Anshan and Fushun, covering a total area of 23,000 square kilometers, accounting for 15.5% of the entire Liaoning Province. The resident population is 15.16 million, which is 35.8% of the province's total population.

Lu Yucheng, mayor of Shenyang, stated, "Following the approval as a national-level metropolitan area, we will proceed with integrated development plans, transportation, industrial and environmental governance, as well as the integration of public services."

Since Nanjing was designated as the first national-level metropolitan area in 2021, this is the ninth such designation. It is the first among the cities in the three northeastern provinces (Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang).

With Shenyang's designation as a national-level metropolitan area, various supports including financial aid from the central government for metropolitan area construction are expected, enabling Shenyang to actively promote regional development in the future.

The three northeastern provinces are representative heavy industrial zones of China that drove economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, they have recently fallen behind as underdeveloped regions within China due to their slow response to the rapid development of new growth industries such as advanced technology. As a result, the population is rapidly declining as residents leave for the southern and eastern coastal areas in search of jobs.

In June last year, Shenyang was excluded from the list of 'New First-Tier Cities' announced annually by the New First-Tier City Research Institute. This was the first time since 2013, when the institute began selecting 15 emerging growth hub cities nationwide each year, that Shenyang was omitted from the New First-Tier Cities list.