Latest Airport Economy Development Index Released

On September 13, the China Airport Economy Development Index Report 2025 was officially released at the Achievement Release Hall of the 2025 China International Fair for Trade in Services. The report was compiled by a joint research team from the China Urban Airport Economy Research Center, the Henan Collaborative Innovation Center for Aviation Economy Development, and the Beijing Airport International Technology Institute. This marks the seventh consecutive year that the team has released relevant reports during the Fair.

According to the overall index evaluation results, China’s key airport economic zones maintained stable development in 2024, with minor changes in rankings. The top 20 zones remained largely consistent with the previous year, with four zones retaining their positions and ten zones shifting by only one rank. Shanghai Pudong, Beijing Capital, and Guangzhou Airport Economic Demonstration Zone ranked in the top three, followed by Shenzhen, Beijing Daxing, Zhengzhou Airport Zone, Shanghai Hongqiao, and Chongqing Airport Economic Demonstration Zone in fourth to eighth places. These eight zones all scored above 70 points in the overall index, demonstrating a significant lead over subsequent zones and highlighting their prominent leading effect. Additionally, Taiyuan, Hohhot, Changchun, Lanzhou, and Shijiazhuang Airport Economic Zones ranked in the bottom five.

Compared with the 2024 index data, the 17 national-level airport economic demonstration zones, known as the “national team” of airport economic zones, showed slight fluctuations in their leading advantages in some dimensions but further strengthened their overall comprehensive leadership. Among them, Beijing Capital, Guangzhou, Beijing Daxing, Zhengzhou, and Shanghai Hongqiao ranked in the top five, while Chongqing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu Shuangliu, Xi’an Xianyang, and Guiyang Airport Economic Demonstration Zones ranked sixth to eleventh. Detailed data revealed that, except for the regional influence index, the average scores of the 17 national-level demonstration zones in the overall index and the other eight sub-indices were higher than those of the quasi-demonstration zones. Their advantages were particularly notable in the overall index, hub driving index, international openness index, institutional innovation index, and aviation finance index, underscoring the role of national-level demonstration zones in driving airport economy development.

In terms of sub-index rankings, the airport economic zones exhibited a development pattern of “leveraging respective strengths and complementing each other’s advantages”:

• Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone ranked first in both the regional influence index and institutional mechanism index;

• Shanghai Pudong Airport Economic Zone, with its strong development vitality, topped both the development momentum index and coordinated development index;

• Guangzhou Airport Economic Demonstration Zone, relying on its well-developed aviation hub facilities, ranked first in the hub driving index;

• Beijing Capital Airport Economic Demonstration Zone, with its high level of internationalization, won the top spot in the international openness index;

• Beijing, leveraging its abundant financial resources and industrial ecosystem, ranked first in the urban aviation finance development index;

• Guiyang Shuanglong Airport Economic Demonstration Zone, focusing on green and low-carbon development, secured first place in the green development index;

• Chengdu Tianfu Airport Economic Zone, with its high-quality living support services, ranked first in the life convenience index.

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