The city determines your destiny (depth)

I once read a book that said: I graduated from college in 2007, and it has been 12 years now.

If you ask me: What is the biggest change of ideas in this 10 year?

I will answer without hesitation: choosing a suitable city is much more important than choosing a university/a job/a partner.

I remember when I was filling in my college volunteers, a teacher kept reminding us not to look only at the school, but also at the city. Compared with schools at the same level, it is necessary to choose excellent coastal cities.

Unfortunately, at that time, most students, including me, could not understand the value of this sentence.

I still remember a teacher who told his children to give up an undergraduate school in the west and go to Shanghai for junior college instead. At that time, many students could not understand this behavior.

A few years later, I became more and more deeply aware of the importance of a city.

What is the essence of struggle?

In fact, it is a process of constantly leveraging resources around us and combining our own advantages. Simply put, it is to realize the resources around you.

What is the essence of buying a house?

In fact, it is to buy a city's service and future. Simply put, buying a house means buying shares in this city.

The distribution of urban resources in China is very uneven, and the types of resources are beginning to differentiate, so choosing a suitable city is sometimes more important than choosing a university or a job.

The city where you were born determines your temperament.

The city you develop determines your future.

Beijing is suitable for doing business, thinking and studying. People who come from the bottom but have ideas, are resourceful and flexible, and have lofty ideals can all make breakthroughs.

Shanghai is suitable for dressing up as a person with temperament and talking in circles. Those who have a good family background, are cautious, like fashion/are proficient in high culture can go to Shanghai Beach.

Shenzhen is suitable for being practical, pragmatic/efficient. No matter whether a white cat or a black cat can catch mice, it is a good cat. Brave people, realistic people and people who want to do business wholeheartedly can go.

There are politicians/investors/thinkers in Beijing, and of course there are many boasters/quitters;

Shanghai is suitable for being a CEO/ executive/celebrity, and there are many people pretending to be X;

Guangdong is rich in all kinds of bosses, businessmen and unscrupulous traders;

Since you choose a city, you should not only enjoy its convenient resources, but also bear the dark side of the city. This is the law of natural balance.

It is the same reason that you choose the other half. You often have to support beautiful people, and most rich people don't follow the rules.

But one thing, only in this first-tier city can there be such inclusiveness. Its resources are convenient and its negative effects are obvious. If you can control it, you can bring it.

Why do you have to go to first-tier cities?

First-tier cities are more open, with more opportunities and capabilities, and everyone checks and balances each other, so they can only abide by the rules; Second-and third-tier cities are more closed, fighting and hidden rules, and paying more attention to the world.

The more opaque a local rule is, the greater the living space of "hidden rules". Therefore, those vast counties and townships are basically dominated by local strongmen: relationship is more important than ability, and calculation is greater than effort; Comparison is higher than life;

There is a question in Zhihu. What is it like to have been to 100 countries? An answer impressed me deeply.

"I understand that there is no natural correctness and absolute political correctness in this world, and I can accept that others have different three views and their derived ways of thinking."

In this age full of prejudice, incomprehension and even at first glance, it is very important to accept that others have different views and different lifestyles.

If you have the chance, you must live in a big city. It gives you diversified values, and it tells you that there is not only one way to live in life.

Second, the decline in GDP.

Data is just a tool to discover the truth. Many people always like to use the total GDP as a reference standard when measuring the development level of a city, but in fact this is a low-level mistake.

First of all, GDP, as a means of economic statistics in the industrial age, has gradually failed in the digital age. The traditional GDP accounting is to subtract the initial amount from the final result, and then get an added value, which is the value created by society. This is a wide range of calculation methods.

In the Internet age, because of various platforms, the boundaries have been opened, so that more creative individuals can be integrated into the production, and the energy of everyone and every small and sophisticated team will be released.

Many trading activities have changed from "business-to-business" to "person-to-person" and from "face-to-face" to "point-to-point", so transactions are more and more vertically subdivided. At this time, we have to give up the rigid statistical method of production index and flexibly calculate various economic forms to count the production efficiency of small and unregistered teams. Including giving different weights to people of different natures, rather than simply counting the total population.

Secondly, even if we look at GDP and measure the degree of development of a city, we should not look at the total amount, but should look at three data:

(1) per capita GDP

For example, Chongqing's GDP ranks sixth in the country, but its population is more than 30 million, which is more than three times that of Hangzhou, but its total GDP is only a little more than that of Hangzhou, so we always feel that Hangzhou is richer as a whole, and the average house price in Hangzhou is three or four times that of Chongqing.

For another example, the population of Shandong is close to 1 100 million, the population of Jiangsu is more than 80 million, and the whole of Zhejiang Province is only over 50 million. Then why is the GDP of Shandong and Jiangsu higher than that of Zhejiang, but we always feel that Zhejiang is richer and the housing prices in Zhejiang are higher?

(2) the proportion of the tertiary industry

For example, the GDP of Suzhou is much higher than that of Nanjing and Hangzhou. In 20 17 years, it even reached10.7 trillion, second only to several municipalities and first-tier cities. But why can't Suzhou's housing prices compare with Nanjing, where GDP is much lower?

The reason is that Suzhou's GDP content is more industrial, and there are many large foreign-funded enterprises in Suzhou, which has boosted the total GDP, but the proportion of the tertiary industry in Suzhou is very low. The so-called tertiary industry is the service industry, such as eating, drinking and entertainment.

Only the tertiary industry is developed in a city, which shows that its people have strong consumption power, and it also belongs to Jiangsu. Although Suzhou's GDP has been pressing Nanjing, the best medical, educational and cultural industries and employment opportunities in Jiangsu are more in Nanjing, while Suzhou's industrial parks are often larger. To put it more bluntly, there are many white-collar workers and Suzhou workers in Nanjing, and the overall level of Nanjing is definitely higher than Suzhou, so the house price is higher than Suzhou.

(3) the proportion of emerging industries

In this rapidly changing era, the proportion of emerging industries represents the future competitiveness, such as the Internet, e-commerce, artificial intelligence and so on. , can better reflect the vitality of a city.

Taking Shenzhen and Guangzhou as examples, Guangzhou's traditional industries are more stable, while Shenzhen is more inclined to high-tech industries, so Shenzhen is more dynamic;

Compared with Nanjing and Hangzhou, Hangzhou pays more attention to the Internet industry, so the salary level of white-collar workers is higher than that of Nanjing. Generally speaking, Hangzhou is more dynamic.

What kind of provincial capital city is the most promising?

Have you found a fact that all economically developed coastal provinces will have an "economic center" city with a higher level of economic development than the "provincial capital" city? From south to north: Shenzhen, Guangdong VS Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fujian VS Fuzhou, Suzhou, Jiangsu VS Nanjing, Qingdao, Shandong VS Jinan, Dalian, Liaoning VS Shenyang.

In other words, these provinces have an "economic center" and a "political center", which is the so-called "separation of politics and business". Only when "politics" and "commerce" are separated can the economy really develop, so the coastal provinces have achieved fruitful results. At the same time, we will also find that whenever the economies of inland provinces are underdeveloped, there will be an economic phenomenon of "provincial capital leading" in the provincial economy.

For example: Wuhan in Hubei, Changsha in Hunan, Chengdu in Sichuan, Hefei in Anhui, Xi 'an in Shaanxi, Taiyuan in Shanxi, Zhengzhou in Henan and so on.

"Politics" and "commerce" in these places are intertwined, and the economies in these places are often piled up in an "administrative" way.

Take Chengdu as an example. The following are the top cities in Sichuan's GDP. The GDP of a city in Chengdu accounts for nearly 40% of the whole Sichuan province, and Mianyang, the second place, is even a fraction of Chengdu, the first place. This is a typical provincial capital:

Collecting the resources of the whole province to develop a provincial capital is like the poorer the family, the more they want to dress up a dazzling and beautiful child, and they like to spend money where they can see it, such as dressing him up. Because the poorer you are, the more you are afraid of being looked down upon and the more you love face, the more you want to show yourself. This is human nature and law.

Wealthy families often spend their money in invisible places, such as superior educational conditions and good growth environment, because they no longer need to prove themselves to the outside world, and they are all improving themselves pragmatically.

This is also the difference between "inland" and "coastal" economic structures. Poor inland provinces always pile resources on the buildings of provincial capitals, while rich coastal areas always like to be pragmatic and enterprising.

To develop the economic level of a province, it is necessary to "separate politics from business", politics belongs to politics, and business belongs to business. You can choose other cities as "economic centers" and echo the provincial capitals from afar. This is called clear division of labor and accurate positioning.

Because of the cooperative division of labor, multipolarization is the general trend of economic development, so as to achieve coordinated development! In this way, since political achievements have been made, the lives of ordinary people can be improved.

Remember: you can't cook a good dish just by stewing.

three

Let's look at the fate of several important cities.

(1) What is the future of Guangzhou, the core of traditional trade?

After the reform and opening up, China changed from a planned economy to a commodity economy. At this time, Guangzhou, as China's foreign trade center, began to stand out, and the Canton Fair came into being. With the opening of China, Guangzhou has quickly become the center and first-tier city of China's foreign trade, second only to Beijing and Shanghai.

Then why did Guangzhou's position in China begin to decline in recent years?

The most fundamental reason is that we are experiencing another upgrade of human civilization: from the "big industrial age" to the "internet age", this great change will surely give birth to a brand-new urban civilization.

You can compare Guangzhou with Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

Guangzhou is the gateway of China's traditional trade and the place where traditional commodities circulate and gather. The rise of Internet in Shenzhen and Hangzhou has greatly changed the circulation mode of traditional commodities.

As the location of Tencent, Shenzhen carries social information docking functions such as WeChat, and hundreds of millions of users conduct business activities on it every day: ordering food, taking a taxi, making an appointment with a doctor, delivering by courier, scanning the bus code and so on. These are like ants, eroding the large-scale and unified traditional commercial services in the past.

As the location of Alibaba, Hangzhou has changed the channels of commodity circulation. For example, Taobao and Tmall have connected more than 200 countries, with a population of 2 billion and goods worth hundreds of trillions, defeating all the super ports and shopping centers in the world.

When social information docking and commodity circulation channels have changed, traditional trade will be seriously impacted, which can be seen from the desolation of Guangzhou Canton Fair and major booths.

The core wealth of the future society is no longer products, but data and information.

Extremes must be reversed. Any city that prospers to a certain extent will be stable, and then it will solidify and lose its vitality.

Looking at the demographic differences between Guangzhou and Shenzhen, we can find that there are six cities in Shenzhen that are the sources of the new inflow population in 20 17.

The former 10 cities in Guangzhou, and the newly-added inflow sources in 20 17 years are all located in Guangdong province.

As the saying goes, tolerance is great. Compared with Shenzhen, Guangzhou is obviously more tolerant, which can also be seen from another detail: as an immigrant city, the common language of Shenzhen is Mandarin, but as a traditional metropolis, Guangzhou is popular.

Obviously, compared with the opening of Shenzhen, Guangzhou has become closed.

Guangzhou has done nothing wrong, which is the general trend. You know, past success will always be your burden now.

The wind and water turn, each leading the way for hundreds of years. Push forward 1000, Kaifeng is the largest city in the world (Song Dynasty), and push forward 1300, Xi 'an is also the largest city in the world (Tang Dynasty).

Therefore, each of us needs to calmly face the historical trend. If it goes up, it will go up, and if it goes down, it will go down. We should respect the law and history.

(2) What is the future of Shanghai, the core of traditional finance?

Shanghai is the financial center of China. Traditional finance is often beneficial to large enterprises. We often say that putting money in the bank is a disguised form of relief for the poor, because it is difficult for the poor to get loan support from the bank, which makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.

In the Internet age, take Ant Financial Service in Hangzhou as an example. Over the past five years, its micro-loan has provided nearly 700 billion yuan in loans to more than 4 million small and micro enterprises. Alipay has also connected 600 million users around the world, who have benefited thousands of small and medium-sized individuals in Qian Qian who are in urgent need of assistance.

Future finance is based on the inclusive support of big data and credit, rather than the traditional bank mortgage loan model.

The core task of traditional trade finance is to maximize the docking of large enterprises and large projects. The core task of finance and trade in the Internet era is to take care of small and medium-sized enterprises and idle funds most extensively, which conforms to the general trend of "individual rise" and supports the common growth of countless individuals.

For example, this year, 2 1 1 * 3.43 million merchants received 202 billion financial support from the online merchant bank, of which the minimum loan was only 1 yuan, which was used to sell red beans and barley planted by farmers. 1 yuan can also be used as a credit loan to help small enterprises solve the problem of capital occupation to the greatest extent.

The so-called "3 10" loan service refers to the loan mode of 3 minutes online application, 1 second loan and 0 manual intervention. The so-called "2 12" insurance service means: 2 minutes for application, 1 second for review, and 2 hours for receipt. Tens of millions of small and micro operators have obtained financial services that were previously difficult to reach.

This reflects that the service threshold is getting lower and lower, and tens of millions of small and micro operators can enjoy undifferentiated services.

If small and medium-sized enterprises and young individuals all over the world can be activated and then connected, that kind of subversion is unimaginable.

Why can't a powerful Internet enterprise be born in Shanghai?

Again: yesterday's glory is always easy to become the burden of the present. Shanghai has lost the spirit of hard work.

(3) city chain = wealth chain

Now continue to explain the urban economic structure in detail, we must understand a concept, and that is the industrial chain. Let's take a look at China's "traditional industrial chain":

Take textile and clothing as an example to illustrate that "cotton" from Xinjiang is first shipped to Shandong, where it is made into yarn, and then the "yarn" from Shandong is shipped to Jiangsu and Zhejiang to make fabric, and then it is shipped to Guangdong to make clothing, and then it is branded by major brands. Every piece of clothing on our bodies is made in this way.

Everything from "cotton" to "yarn" is primary processing and belongs to labor-intensive production. From "yarn" to "fabric" is a deep processing, which requires dyeing, bleaching, dyeing and other functional testing, while from "fabric" to "clothing", it needs the creative injection of designers to become clothing. Finally, the "brand" operation, through the continuous marketing and publicity of the brand, eventually became the brand clothing sought after by all kinds of people.

Have you found that in this traditional industrial chain, from low to high, the economic levels of Xinjiang, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong are improving in turn.

This is determined by positioning. The higher the link you are in, the greater the technical content you need, and the higher the income you get from focusing on mental work. The lower the link you are in, the lower the technical content you need, mainly manual labor, often extensive production.

From the product point of view, brand operation is the highest link in the industrial chain. For example, although all the Apple phones we use are made by Foxconn, we never think they are made in China, which is the magic of the brand.

From a commercial point of view, finance is the highest link in the industrial chain. Whether it is fast-moving consumer goods such as clothing or service industry, many brands set their headquarters in Beijing and then send their money to Shanghai for operation (financial center).

The regional economic structure of China is formed as follows:

Xinjiang-Shandong-Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Guangdong-Beijing-Shanghai.

The essence is this:

Materials-processing-technology-brand-finance.

It is such a process, so sometimes congenital conditions are more likely to determine the location of an area. For example, almost all "resource-intensive areas" are in "economic depression areas". For example, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Shanxi have many advantageous raw materials, such as wool, minerals and other natural resources. No matter how extreme your breeding and mining technology is, you can only be at the bottom of the "resources".

Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong are often barren land and can only make a living by engaging in commercial activities. It's like a person who is born with the old capital of "enjoying the success" and often "not making progress". And if a person is born with "nothing", there is bound to be a strong desire to create.

City = life

Sometimes it's really not that we don't work hard enough, but that you were born in a certain link. Your link positioning is not only related to your region, but also related to your background, environment, knowledge and ability. No matter how extreme you are in a certain link, you can only stay in this link forever.

Indeed, people are born unequal. This is terrible, and your area can also be a condition that restricts your development. For example, many people are from technicians to engineers, senior engineers, super engineers and skilled workers. ...

The only way to counterattack in life is to improve your own pattern. When you can look at these changes from a higher level, you will find that there are bigger things waiting for you to do, and you will jump out of the problem and look at the problem.

Pattern can not only determine the height, but also change a person's position. The future of China is still full of various variables, but one thing will not change, that is, positioning determines the future. There are many cities with vague positioning, and you often have no deep impression when you mention them. Just like a person is mediocre in all aspects and belongs to an ordinary generation. How do you evaluate its future?

There are still many cities that are vacillating and have no clear positioning. It's like when you find that a person can do everything, but can't do anything well.

And when you find a man who knows nothing, there is always one thing that no one can compare with him, but you haven't discovered its potential yet!

Then, when we have made up our minds secretly for countless times, have we ever wondered why we were born?