Mapping geography yields some surprises

Beijing tops the economic stakes

Shanghai is known around the world as the economic hub of China. But the CBN list tells the story of which city actually dominates when it comes to listed companies.

It is Beijing, a city that long wanted to hide its economic success.

The city topped the ranking both in listed companies and soon-to-be listed companies, far outperforming Shanghai.

The city was also a star of the "new economy". Of the 229 listed companies, 43 were in information technology, software and the IT service industry. Of the 64 companies to be listed, 12 were in this category. The number of culture and entertainment companies also beat any other region in China.

With its dynamic private equity and venture capital sector, numerous government support funds and rich entrepreneurial culture, Beijing is unusually strong in the small and medium-sized enterprise sector.

Beijing has only 40 companies in the A-share's SME sector (722 companies in total), but their market capitalization accounted for 24.3 percent of the sector.

To be fair, Beijing benefited enormously in terms of being a "headquarters economy", with most central State-owned enterprises based in the capital. Their success should be attributed to the national market rather than Beijing, but analysts said there are other important reasons.

"The intense concentration of enterprises enabled the frequent flow of information, capital and talent, which made the 'financial awareness' of companies in Beijing quite high," said Li Daxiao, chief economist at Yingda Securities.

Zhongguancun High-tech Zone, a technology park with State-sponsored incubators, has attracted enterprises around China, which attributed to Beijing's standing.

Shenzhen leads IPO race

The significance of Shenzhen, a city unknown to many Westerners, may be underestimated, at least from the CBN list.

The city outperformed Shanghai in terms of number of to-be-listed companies (55 compared with 44), a sign of the city's vigorous corporate sector and promising future. Home to household names such as China Vanke Co Ltd, China Merchants Bank, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, Tencent Holding Ltd, Ping An Insurance (Group) Co of China Ltd, Shenzhen is a hotbed for private entrepreneurship.

If measured by the number of private companies to be listed, Shenzhen even beat Beijing. The latter had 17 SOEs in its 64 companies to be listed, while there are only three SOEs in Shenzhen's 55 companies to be listed.