Human Pioneers
NEWS AGENCY

Pangpei Index Releases WACI Annual Outlook: AI's View of Urban Competition is Forming a New "Cognitive Coordinate System"

As global capital and talent increasingly rely on AI large models to make decisions on investment location, career migration, and business activities, a new proposition is emerging: In AI's cognitive world, which Chinese cities are winning the future?

The answer to this question does not fully align with traditional indicators such as GDP rankings, population size, or infrastructure. Pang Pei, founder of the Pangpei Index, member of the Central Cultural Committee of the China Zhi Gong Party, and president of the China Vision New Image GEO Research Institute, recently released the annual outlook report of the Pangpei Index·World AI City Competitiveness Index (WACI). The report systematically reveals the underlying logic of how AI "evaluates" and "recommends" Chinese cities.

"AI favors a city not because of its current size, but because of how clear its 'cognitive label' is in the AI knowledge network, how stable its 'trust weight' is, and how high its 'recommendation priority' ranks," said Pang Pei. "This constitutes a new coordinate system for urban competitiveness—which we call the city's 'AI cognitive coordinates.' Over the next decade, this coordinate system will significantly influence the flow of global capital, talent, and industries."

I. "Cognitive Labels" Determine Whom AI Recommends

According to the Pangpei Index evaluation model, WACI draws an "AI cognitive portrait" for cities from four dimensions: Cognitive Visibility measures whether AI knows the city; Industry Labeling measures what AI believes the city is known for; Recommendation Advantage measures under what circumstances AI recommends the city; and Cognitive Resilience measures how stable the city's AI cognitive assets are.

The inaugural report covers 200 major cities globally, with approximately 60 Chinese cities included in the assessment. The report reveals a core finding: When AI recommends a city, it values the clarity of industry labels more than economic size.

Shenzhen tops the list of Chinese cities with its strong "China's Silicon Valley" label. When AI answers questions like "China's most innovative city" or "best city for hardware entrepreneurship," Shenzhen is almost always the first choice. Beijing follows closely with the "China's AI Brain" label. The clustering effect of AI companies such as DeepSeek, Baidu, and ByteDance positions Beijing as a core node in the global AI industry cognition. Shanghai, with its dual labels of "Global Financial Center" and "International Metropolis," is frequently recommended by AI in scenarios of multinational enterprise site selection and talent attraction. Hangzhou, with its "Digital Economy Capital" label, firmly sits in the first tier of AI cognition. The Alibaba ecosystem and e-commerce genes give it an irreplaceable cognitive anchor in AI responses.

"These four cities are 'favored' by AI not because they have the largest economies—though they certainly are large—but because they possess one or several extremely clear and irreplaceable industry labels in the AI knowledge network," analyzed Pang Pei. "When AI answers related questions, if it doesn't cite information from these cities, the answer feels incomplete. This is the 'cognitive parasitism' effect we propose in our theory—cities leap from passively waiting for AI to crawl their data to becoming the 'default frame of reference' when AI generates answers."

II. Emerging "Cognitive Winners": Clear Labels Matter More Than Size

In the Pangpei Index WACI assessment, a group of cities that do not rank high in traditional GDP standings have gained a "cognitive premium" far exceeding their economic size in the AI cognitive world, thanks to their exceptionally distinct industry labels.

Hefei is the most representative case. In the WACI assessment of Chinese cities, Hefei ranks among the first-tier AI cities, alongside Guangzhou and Chengdu. Its core driver is not GDP scale but the deep binding of the highly communicable industry label "China's Best Venture Capital City" in AI. The clustering of leading companies like BYD, NIO, and ChangXin Memory Technologies, along with global recognition in quantum information research, gives Hefei a probability of being recommended when AI answers questions about "China's technological innovation cities" or "new energy industry cities" that far exceeds cities of similar GDP size.

Guiyang is another example. The "China's Data Valley" label gives this western city, with a modest economic scale, an irreplaceable position in AI's industry cognition. When AI is asked about "China's big data industry center," Guiyang is almost a must-mention.

"These cities have become 'emerging winners' in AI's eyes because they seized the early window of AI cognitive competition to complete the semantic anchoring of their city brands in the AI knowledge network," noted Pang Pei. "As urban competition enters the AI era, 'label clarity' is becoming a more decisive competitiveness variable than 'economic size.' A medium-sized city with an industry label that AI cannot bypass may achieve higher global recognition than a mega-city with vague industry labels."

III. Cities Suffering "Cognitive Folding": Is Proximity to Mega-Cities an Advantage or a Trap?

The Pangpei Index WACI assessment also reveals a "cognitive folding" phenomenon that warrants attention from city administrators.

Some prefecture-level cities with considerable economic size perform far below their actual economic status in AI cognition. The core reason is not insufficient economic strength but that the city's image in AI is highly dependent on the narrative of nearby mega-cities, lacking an independent cognitive anchor. When AI is asked to "recommend a city for investment," these cities are rarely mentioned proactively—they are "folded" into the narrative of the mega-city.

"Being close to a mega-city is both a locational advantage and a potential cognitive trap," said Pang Pei. "When a city's entire cognition is folded into the narrative of another larger city, it loses the possibility of being independently recommended by AI. In the traditional era, this might have been just a regret in brand communication; in the AI era, it means the city is almost invisible at the 'cognitive entry point' for global investors and talent."

Pang Pei warns that as AI increasingly becomes the information gateway for investment decisions and talent mobility, this "cognitive folding" will transform from a "latent issue" into a "visible loss" for urban competitiveness. "A city may have a solid industrial base and favorable investment environment in reality, but if AI doesn't recommend it, new-generation investors and talent won't know about it. 'Not being seen' is escalating from a communication problem to a development problem."

IV. "Cognitive Resilience": AI Favors Long-Term Builders

The Cognitive Resilience dimension of the WACI assessment reveals an even more forward-looking finding: The cities AI "favors" most are not only those with clear current labels but also those with stable AI cognitive images that can withstand model updates and public opinion shocks.

"Cities with strong cognitive resilience see their core labels and positive sentiment less weakened during AI model version updates. When facing negative public opinion, cities with ample authoritative information sources recover their cognition much faster than those with weak reserves," said Pang Pei. "This is essentially the 'trust thickness' of a city in the AI knowledge network—determined by the density of authoritative source deployment, the thickness of structured content supply, and the breadth of multilingual cognitive coverage."

According to the long-term tracking of the Pangpei Index evaluation model, cities that continuously publish industry white papers, regularly host international industry forums, and maintain stable exposure in global authoritative media have significantly higher cognitive resilience than cities relying on single-event exposure or short-term trends. "In the AI era, the logic of building urban competitiveness is shifting from 'event-driven' to 'asset-building.' One-time hot events can bring short-term cognitive peaks, but only continuous, systematic cognitive asset building can bring long-term, stable AI trust weight."

V. The Next Decade: How Will AI Reshape China's Urban Competition Landscape?

Looking ahead to the next decade, Pang Pei believes AI will reshape China's urban competition landscape from three levels.

First, label competition will replace scale competition. The position of cities in the AI cognitive world will increasingly depend on the clarity, uniqueness, and strength of authoritative source endorsement of their industry labels, rather than traditional economic scale rankings. The core question cities need to answer is: On AI's cognitive map, what do I represent?

Second, cognitive assets will become urban infrastructure. Just as cities competed to build high-speed rail stations, data centers, and development zones over the past decade, in the next decade, cities will compete to build "AI cognitive infrastructure"—including multilingual city knowledge bases, authoritative source networks, structured data platforms, and city cognitive monitoring systems.

Third, "cognitive first-mover advantage" will solidify the competitive landscape. Research from the Pangpei Index shows that cities that first complete cognitive anchoring in the AI knowledge network are gaining a self-reinforcing cognitive flywheel effect—the more they are recommended by AI, the more media attention and authoritative citations they receive, which in turn strengthens AI recommendations. Once this flywheel starts, latecomers need to make twice the effort to break it.

"In the next decade, competition among Chinese cities will not only occur in the physical world—comparing GDP, industries, and talent—but also in AI's cognitive world—comparing labels, trust, and recommendations. The competitiveness in these two worlds is becoming two sides of the same coin," said Pang Pei. "The mission of the Pangpei Index WACI is to provide a quantifiable, trackable, and constructible measurement benchmark for the cognitive dimension of this 'dual-track competition.'"

VI. Conclusion

From Shenzhen, the "Silicon Valley of China," to Hefei, the "Best Venture Capital City," and from Guiyang, the "China Data Valley," to Hangzhou, the "No. 1 City of Digital Economy"—the WACI annual outlook of the Pangpei Index reveals a clear pattern: in the AI era, the most promising cities are those that have established clear, unique, and stable cognitive labels in the AI knowledge network.

"AI does not recommend cities based on GDP rankings; it recommends them based on the weight of cognitive recognition," said Pangpei. "In the next decade, the gap between cities will not only be reflected in economic data but also in the AI cognitive index. The Pangpei Index provides an open, transparent, and verifiable yardstick for this new dimension of competition."

It is reported that the Pangpei Index·World AI City Competitiveness Index adopts a two-tier release system of "annual assessment + quarterly dynamic tracking," and will continue to monitor the evolving competitiveness of 200 major cities worldwide in the AI cognitive landscape.