Evaluation Of The Comprehensive Competitiveness Of Hunan Prefecture-level Cities Based On Principal Component Analysis

The influence of cities on modern people’s lives is becoming more and more prominent,and the development of cities is of great significance in promoting economic development and maintaining social stability,so it is necessary to evaluate the comprehensive competitiveness of cities.In the context of continuous opening and development,the importance of comprehensive competitiveness of cities has become more and more prominent.Comprehensive evaluation of the competitiveness of cities can help identify urban development problems and provide a reference basis for development policy formulation.It is of great significance to study the comprehensive competitiveness of Hunan’s prefecture-level cities to respond to the requirements of national strategy and promote Hunan Province to achieve a higher level of development.This thesis constructs an evaluation index system for the comprehensive competitiveness of Hunan prefecture-level cities,and 37 evaluation indexes are selected in four fields: economy,science and education,society,and openness to the outside world.The evaluation analysis is carried out by principal component analysis,and the scores of each of the four fields are calculated and ranked for evaluation.The economic field as a whole presents a situation of core prominence and partial backwardness;Changsha City has a superb voice in the economic field and oversees the whole situation.Zhuzhou,Yueyang,Changde and Hengyang have good economic strength and play the role of the mainstay;Yiyang,Yongzhou,Zhangjiajie and Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture are relatively backward in economic development,which restricts the improvement of their comprehensive competitiveness.The scientific and educational competitiveness of Changsha City in the field of science and education has obvious advantages over other prefecture-level cities.Zhuzhou and Hengyang,the top-ranked cities,also have a certain gap with Changsha,and other prefecture-level cities generally have low competitiveness in science and education.Changsha City continues to lead in the social sector,although the margin of leadership has decreased.The neighbouring prefecture-level cities in the ranking after Changsha have a similar level of social competitiveness;Zhangjiajie City is at the bottom of the ranking and shows a significant gap compared to the previous ranked city.Changsha City still maintains an absolute advantage in the field of opening up to the outside world,while the degree of openness of other cities needs to be improved and Zhangjiajie’s performance in opening up to the outside world has improved relative to other fields.Based on the scores of the four sub-domains,a combination of subjective and objective weighting is used to calculate the comprehensive competitiveness score.According to the score,each prefecturelevel city is graded,its strengths and weaknesses in development are analyzed,and countermeasures to strengthen the comprehensive competitiveness of the city are proposed.Changsha City is the absolute leader in the province in terms of competitive strength,and should strengthen the role of the provincial capital city in radiation and drive,leading the joint development with points,forming complementary advantages to create the convergence of urban clusters;support and drive the development of lagging cities,explore new development models and establish new patterns of co-development.Balancing competition and cooperation between cities or urban agglomerations and creating urban communities will be the new direction of urban construction and development in the future.