Regression Analysis of GDP Development of Cities in China — Taking Foshan and Fuzhou as Examples

Abstract

GDP (Gross Domestic Product), is the final result of production activities of all resident units of a country (or region) in a certain period of time. GDP is not only a core indicator of national economic accounting, but also an important indicator of the economic situation and development level of a country or region. China is the largest developing country and the second largest economy in the world. Since reform and opening to the outsideworld, China’s economy has maintained rapid growth, making a significant contribution to global economic growth. In 2020, China’s GDP brokekthrough 100 trillion, became the only major economy in the world to achieve positive growth; in 2022, China’s GDP reached 121 trillion, with a growth rate of 3%, and per capita GDP exceeded 12,000 dollars. With new momentum such as high-tech manufacturing and services growing, the quality of China’s economic development has been steadily improving, residents’ incomes basically synchronized with economic growth, and grain output stabilized at over 1.3 trillion pounds for eight consecutive years. Thus it can be seen, China’s economy has showed strong resilience, potential and space to embrace a brighter future. Focusing on specific regions, the GDP of some prefectural-level cities in China has been developing rapidly, showing the trend of “a thousand sailboats are competing across the river”. This phenomenon is most notable in the eastern part of China. Among them, Fuzhou City, capital of Fujian Province, and Foshan City, Guangdong Province, as two second-tier cities on the southeast coast, have received more attention for their GDP. In February 2023, the Foshan City Statistical Bureau released its GDP data for 2022: the total amount was 1,269.839 billion, with an incremental GDP of 54.185 billion and a nominal growth rate of 4.46%. Almost at the same time, Fuzhou City Statistical Bureau also released data: the city’s GDP realized 1,230.823 billion in 2022, with a nominal growth rate of 8.69%, moving up two places in the national GDP ranking. The two cities met in the national GDP ranking, ranking 17th and 18th respectively. And Fuzhou City has achieved an astonishing nominal growth rate of 8.69 %, also proved the importance of the strong provincial capital strategy for Fujian. These two cities, to a certain extent, also condensed the development status of the Fuxia Economic Circle and the Zhujiang Triangle Economic Circle, predicting and analyzing the economic significance of the GDP data of these two cities. This paper analyzes the GDP data of Foshan City and Fuzhou City based on the development in recent years, and tries to perform simple OLS linear regression analysis on its data through using statsmodels.api, matplotlib and so on in Python software, and selects the year of use reasonably according to the regression results to predict the GDP of the two cities in the future and provide the basic suggestions in a simple way.