China's Xuzhou

I was in Xuzhou (徐州) in 2000, and remember the city mainly for the rain, the fact that it looked like any other bustling second or third-tier city in China, and its Han terracotta warriors (pictured, which are less famous than their Xi'an (西安) counterpart).

According to a 2003 article, few outsiders were aware of Xuzhou's appeal, as it rarely promoted itself, unlike Suzhou (苏州) and many other southern Chinese cities.

"Xuzhou has not needed to advertise itself to the outside world ever since the city was crowned the state capital of the Han dynasty 2,200 years ago," Michael Jen-Siu wrote.

Rural inhabitants and people living in smaller towns and scattered across five provinces - Jiangsu (江苏), Anhui (安徽), Henan (河南), Shandong (山东) and Hebei (河北) - have naturally travelled to the city, because of its status as a crossroads. This persisted till today, where vehicle licence plates from four provinces could be found on the roads of Xuzhou.

Apart from the two railway lines - the Beijing-Shanghai and Gansu-Shanghai -, the city is also equipped with four expressways and 20 provincial highways. A canal from Huangzhou to Beijing leads to four Xuzhou ports, and flights from Xuzhou's domestic airport fly to 10 cities.

The city also boasts of more shopping centers than most cities with a comparable population of about 1.5 million people. Like most east-coast cities, Xuzhou has an economic development zone with 500 companies, including Haier and Caterpillar.

But with many east coast Chinese cities prospering and growing at a rapid pace, many businesses in Xuzhou reportedly wanted officials to promote the city as a tourist town and a key business center.

As an economics researcher pointed out, in order to reach the level of a first-tier coastal city, Xuzhou must first overcome its shrinking coal resources. He also suggested that the city's distance of more than 100 km from the ocean could make it difficult for Xuzhou to compete for investment.