Comprehensive Assessment and Policy Suggestions on Building Multi-Level National Service Centers

The strategic position of a country’s central cities in the global city network is mainly embodied by the functions of the service industry and high-end producer services in particular. With a view to enhance the economic control power, building a country with considerable strength in the service industry is to build multi-level national central cities capable of performing service functions according to a strategic layout. By looking back on the law of development of central cities of service industry around the globe, we first dug into the issue from the fundamental principles of new economic geography about the formation of industrial clusters; then incorporated influencing factors, such as factor endowment, outward connections, inward connections, institutional factors, market size, knowledge capital, development cost and consumption, into a uniform analytical framework; and established an indicator system for assessing the competitiveness of service industry cluster centers, whereby we assessed the comprehensive strength of 105 cities in building national central cities of service industry. The research results show that it is supposed to enhance China’s leading and controlling capability in the world’s service network by relying on two key cities, i.e. Beijing and Shanghai; and the other 15 cities, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Shenyang, Qingdao, Changsha, Kunming and Urumqi, are most likely to become the national central cities of service industry, which can provide comprehensive services or specialized functions.