The city of Chengdu in Southwest China has been ranked the third-highest performing city in terms of economic growth in the Brookings Institute "2018 Global Metro Monitor".

The Brookings Institute, an American public policy think-tank, looked at the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), GDP per capita, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), employment, and population of the 300 largest metropolitan economies. The reports says that these areas account for 36 percent of global employment growth, and 67 percent of global GDP growth.

Metropolitan areas in China and parts of the Asia-Pacific experienced the fastest growth in per capita GDP growth, whereas those in the Middle East and Africa exhibited the fastest growth in employment.

Chengdu is a rising star in the rankings, with employment growth of 5.9 percent, GDP per capita growing at 7.2 percent, coming in at third-place in the overall rankings behind Dublin and San Jose.

Out of the top 30 cities in the index of economic performance from 2014 to 2016, 17 are in China. Second-tier cities are relatively strong performers in the rankings, as middle-income cities can achieve a relatively large increase in growth quickly thanks for their lower starting point, compared to other larger established cities.

The 21 metropolitan areas in China that landed in the top fifth of the distribution in terms of economic performance were located in the central industrial basin or the highly urbanized coastal regions.

Back in 2012, when Brookings ranked the world's cities according to the size of their economy, only 48 cities in China made the list of 300. According to this year's report, 103 cities in China were on the list, exceeding the number in North America and western Europe.