A port in Jining is bustling with ships loaded with coal. [Photo/Dazhong Daily]

Jining in East China's Shandong province made China's top 30 municipal-level cities list in terms of regional gross domestic product in 2021, according to Chinese financial media outlet Yicai.

Jining had a GDP of 507 billion yuan ($79.7 billion) last year and ranked 24th on the list that has excluded municipalities such as Beijing and Shanghai, provincial capitals, as well as developed non-capital cities (Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen and Shenzhen).

In 2021, the added value of the first, second and tertiary industries increased by 7.6 percent, 8.2 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively, to 58.38 billion yuan, 203.47 billion yuan and 245.16 billion yuan.

As a former coal production center in China, Jining has stepped up efforts in recent years to restructure its industrial layout, with manufacturing as its new economic driver.

Under the circumstances of a sharp coal production cut in 2021, the added value of the city's industrial enterprises with annual revenues of 20 million yuan or more increased by 13.1 percent, which is 3.5 percentage points higher than the provincial average. Of that, the manufacturing industry rose by 15.7 percent.

The engineering machinery industrial cluster led by Shantui Construction Machinery Co, and Jining plant of Japanese machinery giant Komatsu, has been included in Shandong's top 10 industrial clusters.