Shanghai and Beijing are often used as shorthand for Chinese growth. Yet as a 250-page report by HSBC Global Research argues, the country’s economic miracle has not been confined to the megacities. Rather, it is being driven by a broad range of China’s 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. If westerners haven’t heard of many of these, they soon will: HSBC predicts that by 2020 China will have no less than six provinces with an annual gross domestic product the size of Russia.　　

　　Perhaps most astonishing is the fact that six provinces - Guangdong, Zheijiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei and Henan - are expected to have an annual GDP of over $1,000bn within the next ten years. That puts them above countries including Russia, Canada and Spain. Unsurprisingly, all of these provinces are in the wealthy east of the country.

　　A further 10 provinces - some of which are in the centre (for instance Sichuan) and north (for instance Inner Mongolia) of China- will have GDPs between $500bn and $1,000bn by 2020, comparable to countries such as Indonesia, South Africa and Switzerland. As the authors of the report put it, China will begin to resemble “a collection of second-tier developed world and leading developing countries.”

　　Many will also be surprised to learn that Jiangsu, a province little known to westerners, is set to overtake better known Guangdong province as China’s largest provincial economy as early as 2012. The province, whose economy is set to expand by an explosive 17 per cent in nominal terms in 2010, is home to many of the world’s leading exporters of electronic equipment, chemicals and textiles.

　　It has also been China’s largest recipient of foreign direct investment for the last four years ($25.3bn in 2009). Part of the reason may be that, unlike other provinces, most of Jiangsu’s companies are not state-run. HSBC estimates that nearly 80 per cent of the largest companies in the province are privately-owned.

　　Jiangsu is also home to China’s richest major city, Suzhou, famous for its Singaporean-designed industrial park. The honour of richest city (of any size) in China goes to Erdos in Inner Mongolia - the traditionally poor northwest of country - whose GDP per capita in 2009 had already reached the $20,000 mark, thanks to resource extraction.