The city of Yiwu in central part of east China's Zhejiang Province beats 21 other cities in the province to become the most competitive county-level city in terms of the comprehensive economic competitiveness, an analysis report released by Zhejiang Provincial City Investigation Centeron Monday showed.

The report indicated that Yiwu topped the rankings of the first eight most powful county-level cities, followed by Cixi, Yuyao, Zhuji, Haining, Wnling, Fuyang and Tongxiang.

Yiwu enjoys an evident advantage over its competitors in the assessment of "economic development" category with its economic scale, development speed, structure, economic performance and the degree of opening-up far exceeding that of other cities investigated.

Cixi city comes closely after Yiwu in this category, ranking at second place, and is deemed as the first level of city along with Yiwu, followed by Yuyao, Haining, Wenling, Tongxiang, Zhuji, Leqing, Rui'an, Shangyu and Fuyang, which were all together considered as the second level.

Zhuji was in first place in the assessment of competitiveness of "population and labour",with its employment rate higher than all others.

Cixi and Wenling followed in second and third places respectively in this category.

Surprisingly, there were no county-level cities under jurisdiction of Wenzhou, an eocnomically-developed region in the country, listed in the top eight most county-level cities in the report.

Talking about the issue, Chen Dingyao, deputy chief of Provincial City Investigation Center, explained that some cities in Wenzhou, such as Yueqing and Rui'an, were superior to other cities in some assessment categories such as population growth rate and the proportion of professionals despite its sound economic development.