The downtown area of Jinan, capital of East China's Shandong province. [Photo/ql1d.com]

Jinan, capital of East China's Shandong province, has been classified as a second-tier city in the 2020 City Classification by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) .

The classification was released on Aug 21.

The leading global rating agency grades cities on four levels, including Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Sufficiency. Each level has two or four ratings indicated as +/-, based on indicators such as business and professional services such as banking, insurance, accounting, law, advertising and management consulting, all of which are essential to economic development.

This year, Jinan was classified in the Beta- category and ranked first among all Shandong cities, a major upgrade compared to its 2018 ranking in which it was deemed a third-tier city.

In 2019, Jinan's regional gross domestic production (GDP) was valued at 944.34 billion yuan ($136.83 billion), ranking among the top 20 cities on the Chinese mainland.

Despite the impact of COVID-19 in the first half of this year, the city's GDP still increased 0.7 percent year-on-year to 452.97 billion yuan.

Official data show that Jinan was home to 140 headquarters enterprises, including 35 centrally-administered State-owned enterprises, as of the end of 2019.

The city has held more than 20 promotional conferences in the cities of Shanghai and Beijing, as well as in Japan, South Korea and some European countries over the past year and established closer relations with more than 2,000 Fortune Global 500 companies, transnational corporations and State-owned companies.

By providing a fairer and more convenient investment environment, the government hopes to attract more investment from foreign enterprises.