The districts of Donghe, Qingshan, Jiuyuan and Hondlon – in the city of Baotou – made it onto the list of the best districts in the top 100 counties and cities in West China, according to an announcement on Nov 8.

The data was from the Monitoring Report on County Development in Western China 2022, jointly released by the Beijing Zhongxin Urban Planning and Design Institute and other institutions.

The Report featured the list of the "2022 Top 100 Counties and Cities in West China" and the "2022 Top 100 Districts in West China".

In 2021, the economic aggregate of the western region reportedly topped 24 trillion yuan ($3.4 trillion) – doubling that of 2012 and accounting for 21.1 percent of the national total.

The regions monitored and evaluated were all county-level areas spread out across 12 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in the west of the country.

These were evaluated, based on four aspects: economic scale, quality of life, economic vitality and quality of development. The four sub-indexes were then combined into an overall competitiveness index.