Changzhou's gross domestic product (GDP) exceeded the 800-billion-yuan threshold in 2021, the Municipal Bureau of Statistics said Monday.

The city saw its GDP grow 9.1 percent year-on-year to 880.76 billion yuan last year, a good start for the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

From a sectoral point of view, the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of the economy reached 16.69 billion yuan, 419.89 billion yuan, and 444.18 billion yuan in the value added to the GDP, up 1.5 percent, 9.8 percent, and 8.8 percent, respectively.

In 2021, the per capita GDP of Changzhou citizens stood at 56,897 yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.2 percent. In terms of urban and rural areas, the per capita disposable income of urban residents was 65,822 yuan, an increase of 8.7 percent, while that of rural residents was 35,822 yuan, up 10.7 percent from a year earlier.

Changzhou's consumption and investment grew steadily in 2021. Total retail sales of consumer goods surged 20.2 percent to 291.14 billion yuan last year. Investment in fixed assets increased by 4.1 percent, with industrial investment soaring by 21.1 percent over 2020.

New growth engines continued to drive Changzhou's economy. The manufacturing output of industrial enterprises above the designated size increased by 24.8 percent in 2021.

Changzhou has also attached great importance to attracting foreign investors. The city’s actual use of foreign capital in 2021 reached 3.07 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 13 percent over the previous year.