Hunan's second city, should it rely on Wuhan's "big leg"?

Ask AI · Why does Yueyang choose Wuhan as an industrial upgrading cooperation partner?

Hunan’s second-largest economic city is steadily drawing closer to Wuhan.

Recently, the Yueyang Lingang High-tech Zone has made it clear that it will build a “core growth pole for serving the Wuhan metropolitan circle.”

Earlier this year, at the National Two Sessions and the local Two Sessions, this signal was already very obvious. For example, the Hunan Provincial delegation submitted a set of full-delegation proposals about Yueyang, and mentioned Wuhan twice. These include supporting Yueyang to proactively take on logistics supporting roles for high-end manufacturing in Wuhan—covering logistics support, parts supply, and other links—so as to form a division-of-labor framework of “Changsha R&D and manufacturing + Yueyang logistics distribution” and “Wuhan industrial upgrading + Yueyang supporting services.”

Even earlier, in the Yueyang “15th Five-Year Plan” proposal for 2025, released in December 2025, Yueyang first explicitly stated that it would “proactively connect with and serve the Wuhan metropolitan circle.”

Yueyang is the only city in Hunan that lies on the main navigable channel of the Yangtze River. Its economy and industrial structure are relatively closely connected with the Hubei cities along the Yangtze River’s main navigable channel.

So what kind of “master plan” is Yueyang making by proposing to connect with the Wuhan metropolitan circle?

Yueyang Chenglingji New Port Area | Photo/VCG Creative

Why Wuhan?

Yueyang is a prefecture-level city under Hunan Province, located in the northeastern part of Hunan. It faces the Yangtze River to the north, and embraces Hunan’s “Sanxiang and Sishui” (the four rivers and four waters of the Hunan region) to the south. It cradles Dongting Lake. Covering a total area of 14,858 square kilometers, it administers 3 districts and 4 counties, and manages 2 county-level cities. According to a statistical communiqué released locally in April 2025, the resident population is 4.9875 million.

For many years, Yueyang’s total GDP within Hunan has consistently ranked second only to the provincial capital Changsha, earning it the name “Hunan’s second-largest city.” In addition, Yueyang—together with Hengyang—has been designated as a provincial-level sub-central city of Hunan.

Unlike other cities in Hunan, Yueyang is the only city in the province that borders the Yangtze River’s main navigable channel, and is considered to have close ties with multiple Yangtze River cities along the route, including Wuhan.

It is understood that the Wuhan metropolitan circle includes 9 cities, forming a “1+8” pattern. Specifically, it includes the core city Wuhan, as well as 8 cities: Huangshi, Ezhou, Xiaogan, Huanggang, Xianning, Xiantao, Tianmen, and Qianjiang. Among these 9 cities, the five—Wuhan, Ezhou, Huanggang, Huangshi, and Xianning—are situated right next to the Yangtze River’s main navigable channel.

In the view of Zeng Gang, director of the Urban Development Research Institute at East China Normal University, as the only city in Hunan located on the Yangtze River’s main navigable channel, Yueyang is actively responding to port and shipping coordination between Wuhan Yangluo Port and Yueyang Port, and actively participating in the multimodal transport enterprise alliance for cities in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. This is an inevitable choice to enhance Yueyang’s transportation hub capability and to support the cross-regional division-of-labor framework of “Changsha R&D and manufacturing + Yueyang logistics distribution” and “Wuhan innovation-driven sourcing + Yueyang transformation manufacturing.”

Yueyang Chenglingji New Port Area | Photo/VCG Creative

Apart from cooperation in shipping, Yueyang’s connection with the Wuhan metropolitan circle is also considered closely related to industrial upgrading.

It is understood that the petrochemical industry is Yueyang’s “keystone.” During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, the industry’s full-industry-chain annual output value exceeded 2000 billion yuan, propping up roughly half of Yueyang’s industrial “half of the mountain.”

“The petrochemical industry is a traditional old industry in Yueyang; it had taken shape in Yueyang as early as the 1970s. But in recent years, as in many places, Yueyang’s petrochemical industry—this traditional industry—faces sluggish growth and mounting pressure to transform and upgrade,” said Peng Zhimin, a former advisor to the Hubei Provincial Government and a researcher at the Hubei Academy of Social Sciences, to China News Weekly.

In Peng Zhimin’s view, this is the direct driving force behind Yueyang’s desire to cooperate with Wuhan. In the future, Yueyang’s petrochemical industry can leverage Wuhan’s R&D strength to tackle fine chemical engineering and even the pharmaceutical industry.

It is understood that Wuhan has 7 “211” universities. Among them, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Wuhan University of Technology have relatively strong chemical engineering disciplines, and China University of Geosciences has majors in petroleum and chemical engineering that are even more of its flagship specialties.

Zeng Gang also believes that Wuhan has many universities and research institutes needed for Yueyang’s industrial transformation and upgrading. By building the “Han—Yue—Chang economic sci-tech innovation corridor,” Wuhan’s strong capability to generate ideas and drive strategies can be connected to Yueyang’s vast application scenarios. This will help promote cross-regional integrated cooperation among government, industry, academia, research, and application between Yueyang and Wuhan, explore a new model of “Wuhan R&D + Yueyang transformation,” and cultivate more single-item champions and “specialized and innovative small giant” enterprises.

A new growth fulcrum for the “Central Three Regions”

In addition to its own positioning, Yueyang’s connection with the Wuhan metropolitan circle is also considered closely tied to the development of the “Central Three Regions.”

In the 2026 National Two Sessions, the government work report for the first time proposed “promoting the accelerated development of city clusters in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.” This is the first time that the “city cluster in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River” is written into the government work report, showing that the cluster’s status in the national strategy has been further enhanced.

“But the reality is that compared with city clusters that are more mature—such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta—the city cluster in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, namely the so-called ‘Central Three Regions,’ is still far behind in overall development and in the strength of linkages among cities. Some regional cooperation faces obstacles from local protectionism. Industrial division of labor progresses slowly. To achieve cooperation that can truly be implemented on the ground, it is necessary to find a relatively strong fulcrum,” Peng Zhimin said.

In 2025, the combined GDP of Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi is about 15.4 trillion yuan. But in the view of many industry insiders, in terms of area, the scale of the city cluster spanning three provinces in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River is too large, increasing the difficulty of internal integration. In terms of geography, the distance between the three provincial capital cities is about 350 kilometers, far greater than that between Chengdu and Chongqing.

Peng Zhimin believes that previously, the city cluster in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River has carried out cooperation across provinces and in adjacent regions—for example, the cooperation among three prefecture-level cities “Xian–Yue–Jiu” (Xian’ning, Yueyang, and Jiujiang) and the cooperation among three counties at the junction of the three provinces under “Tongpingxiu” (Tongcheng County in Hubei, Pingjiang County in Hunan, and Xiushui County in Jiangxi). But that is far from enough. As the northernmost Yangtze River coastal city in Hunan, Yueyang is the geographical junction between the Wuhan metropolitan circle and the Changzhutan city cluster. It has a geographic advantage in connecting with Wuhan, and can also become one of the important fulcrums for cooperation within the city cluster in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.

Zeng Gang, meanwhile, analyzed that Yueyang is located in the “Golden Cross” where the Yangtze River and the Jingguang Railway line intersect. At the same time, it is also at a central node of both the Wuhan metropolitan circle and the Changzhutan metropolitan circle, placing it in the intersection zone of the two metropolitan circles. By actively building itself into an important node city between the two metropolitan circles, Yueyang in essence assumes the role of a bridge for cross-provincial regional coordination.

In his view, the national “15th Five-Year Plan” proposal clearly states “promoting the accelerated development of city clusters in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.” As one of the 12 observer cities in the city cluster in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Yueyang’s proactive connection with the Wuhan metropolitan circle is an active move to implement the national strategic deployment.

But whether it is about “leaning in” or “getting on a bigger bandwagon,” it requires finding projects that can actually be implemented. In the view of many industry insiders, this is the key to ensuring that relevant policies and regional cooperation do not end up as empty talk.

Zeng Gang believes that Yueyang is the “central node” between the Changzhutan metropolitan circle and the Wuhan metropolitan circle, and that a “Yue-Wu Cooperation” joint office could be established. He suggests that Yueyang set up a leadership working group led by main leaders to connect with the Wuhan metropolitan circle, and at the same time establish a stationed liaison office in Wuhan to handle daily docking, information communication, and project coordination.

“In the future, Hubei Port Group and Yueyang Port Group can further deepen strategic cooperation, increase the frequency of the ‘Yueyang Port—Yangluo Port—Jiujiang Port’ container routes, and build a ‘water bus’ network for the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. At the same time, efforts can also be strengthened to dredge the navigation channel between Wuhan and Chenglingji to meet the year-round navigation requirements for 10,000-ton-class vessels at Chenglingji Port, and to promote Yueyang Port’s inclusion in the core node network of Wuhan’s Yangtze River shipping center. In addition, it is also suggested to seize the opportunity of building the Yueyang Modern Petrochemical Science and Technology Innovation Center to advance the industrialization and transformation of petrochemical research achievements from universities such as Wuhan University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology—prioritizing realization in Yueyang,” Zeng Gang said.

Reporter: Zhao Yue

(zhaoyue1@chinanews.com.cn)

Editor: Sun Xiaobo