Last year, I made fun of the “Times Higher Education World University Rankings.” Because its ranking method was peculiar, it also caused some controversy on Zhihu (a Chinese Q&A platform).

This year, let’s try something new and launch a ranking of cities’ technology perception. A unique perspective is the author’s way of expanding their thinking.

What is technological perception? These two words are familiar to everyone, but it’s hard to explain. It’s better not to be too sensitive about it.

The method of ranking is very simple and rough, which is based on the number of subscribing readers in this official account’s city.

Some people say, “This is too absurd, who do you think you are?”

First, let me tell you a story.

This is a perfectly crafted hundreds of thousands of social survey questionnaires.

Our subscription has grown from a three-digit number at the beginning of 2019 to a five-digit number now. The growth has been steady without any sudden surge, which demonstrates the autonomy in dissemination and feedback.

I have noticed a phenomenon: due to the difficult writing style and non-mainstream content of my own writings, people who are not interested in technology cannot even read through them.

For instance, the vast majority of my friends neither read nor subscribe. Therefore, it was difficult to reach an early reading volume of 100. However, to be fair, I excluded my social circle from the sample.

From the perspective of subscription age, 99% of people fall within the range of 18 to 60 years old and are normally distributed. This is the age range of China’s labor force.

Only 10% of subscribers are under 25 years old, so subscription is not primarily aimed at college students; very few are above 60 years old, while the so-called “professional” group fall within this interval.

From a regional distribution perspective, the subscribers are distributed across more than 300 prefecture-level cities, covering almost the entire country. My personal network is nowhere near this vast, thus the spread of the content is formed organically.

The ranking also provides the proportion of overseas subscriptions. From this, we can see that the technology awareness of overseas Chinese is still very prominent according to the population ratio.

Some people say that they can choose their own location in WeChat, but the backend actually determines the location based on the registered IP address. There may be some slight changes, but it does not affect the results.

The biggest remaining question is whether the sample size of 1.4 billion people is large enough for comparison. According to the principles of statistics, the significance of the differences is already sufficient, but I won’t go into specifics.

Without further ado, let us take a look at the rankings.

Ranking City Subscription Ratio
1 上海 15.10%
Shanghai 15.10%
2 北京 14.50%
Beijing. 14.5%.
3 深圳 9.80%
Shenzhen. 9.80%
4 广州 3.90%
Guangzhou 3.90%
5 杭州 3.30%
Hangzhou 3.30%
6 未知 3.10%
Unknown. 3.10%
7 成都 2.50%
Chengdu 2.50%
8 武汉 2.40%
Wuhan. 2.40%
9 南京 2.30%
Nanjing 2.30%
10 美国华人 2.30%
Chinese Americans 2.30%
11 苏州 2.10%
Suzhou 2.10%
12 西安 1.90%
Xi’an 1.90%
13 重庆 1.50%
Chongqing 1.50%
14 合肥 1.30%
Hefei 1.30%
15 长沙 1.10%
Changsha 1.10%
16 天津 1.10%
Tianjin 1.10%
17 东莞 1.00%
Dongguan 1.00%
18 郑州 0.90%
Zhengzhou 0.90%
19 济南 0.90%
Jinan 0.90%
20 青岛 0.80%
Qingdao 0.80%
21 厦门 0.80%
Xiamen 0.80%
22 无锡 0.80%
Wuxi 0.80%
23 佛山 0.80%
Foshan 0.80%
24 福州 0.60%
Fuzhou 0.60%
25 石家庄 0.60%
Shijiazhuang 0.60%
26 宁波 0.60%
Ningbo 0.60%
27 香港 0.50%
Hong Kong 0.50%
28 大连 0.50%
Dalian 0.50%
29 沈阳 0.50%
Shenyang 0.50%
30 加拿大华人 0.40%
Canadian Chinese 0.40%
31 昆明 0.40%
Kunming 0.40%
32 南通 0.40%
Nantong 0.40%
33 常州 0.40%
Changzhou 0.40%
34 南宁 0.40%
Nanning 0.40%
35 泉州 0.40%
Quanzhou 0.40%
36 珠海 0.40%
Zhuhai 0.40%
37 惠州 0.30%
Huizhou 0.30%
38 太原 0.30%
Taiyuan 0.30%
39 长春 0.30%
Changchun 0.30%
40 南昌 0.30%
Nanchang 0.30%
41 新加坡华人 0.30%
Singaporean Chinese 0.30%
42 烟台 0.30%
Yantai 0.30%
43 中山 0.30%
Zhongshan 0.30%
44 潍坊 0.30%
Weifang 0.30%
45 金华 0.30%
Jinhua 0.30%
46 温州 0.30%
Wenzhou 0.30%
47 廊坊 0.30%
Langfang 0.30%
48 淄博 0.30%
Zibo 0.30%
49 嘉兴 0.20%
Jiaxing 0.20%
50 洛阳 0.20%
Luoyang 0.20%
51 台州 0.20%
Taizhou 0.20%
52 徐州 0.20%
Xuzhou 0.20%
53 澳洲华人 0.20%
Australian Chinese 0.20%
54 海口 0.20%
Haikou 0.20%
55 贵阳 0.20%
Guiyang 0.20%
56 绍兴 0.20%
Shaoxing 0.20%
57 乌鲁木齐 0.20%
Urumqi. 0.20%
58 扬州 0.20%
Yangzhou 0.20%
59 保定 0.20%
Baoding 0.20%
60 临沂 0.20%
Linyi 0.20%
61 德国华人 0.20%
German Chinese 0.20%
62 揭阳 0.20%
Jieyang 0.20%
63 汕头 0.20%
Shantou 0.20%
64 荆州 0.20%
Jingzhou 0.20%
65 襄樊 0.20%
Xiangfan 0.20%
66 哈尔滨 0.20%
Harbin 0.20%
67 赣州 0.20%
Ganzhou 0.20%
68 宜昌 0.20%
Yichang 0.2%
69 株洲 0.20%
Zhuzhou 0.20%
70 日本华人 0.20%
Chinese people in Japan. 0.20%
71 荷兰华人 0.20%
Dutch Chinese 0.2%.
72 湛江 0.20%
Zhanjiang 0.20%
73 黄冈 0.10%
Huanggang 0.10%
74 兰州 0.10%
Lanzhou 0.10%
75 柳州 0.10%
Liuzhou 0.10%
76 德州 0.10%
Texas 0.10%
77 沧州 0.10%
Cangzhou 0.10%
78 信阳 0.10%
Xinyang 0.10%
79 岳阳 0.10%
Yueyang 0.10%
80 英国华人 0.10%
British Chinese. 0.10%
81 新乡 0.10%
Xinxiang 0.10%
82 梅州 0.10%
Meizhou 0.10%
83 唐山 0.10%
Tangshan 0.10%
84 漳州 0.10%
Zhangzhou. 0.1%.
85 上饶 0.10%
Shangrao 0.10%
86 镇江 0.10%
Zhenjiang 0.1%.
87 许昌 0.10%
Xuchang 0.10%
88 泰安 0.10%
Taian 0.10%
89 十堰 0.10%
Shiyan 0.10%
90 衡阳 0.10%
Hengyang 0.10%
91 南阳 0.10%
Nanyang. 0.10%
92 枣庄 0.10%
Zaozhuang 0.1%.
93 日照 0.10%
Sunshine 0.10%
94 焦作 0.10%
Jiaozuo 0.10%
95 孝感 0.10%
Xiaogan 0.10%
96 遵义 0.10%
Zunyi 0.10%
97 呼和浩特 0.10%
Hohhot 0.10%
98 宝鸡 0.10%
Baoji 0.10%
99 台州 0.10%
Taizhou 0.1 %.
100 东营 0.10%
Dongying 0.10%

Although there are over 300 cities on the list, I have only listed the top 100 (which account for 91.6%). The remaining approximately 200 prefecture-level cities and 20 countries make up 8.4%, but their rankings are of little significance.

So, what is the use of this ranking of technology cities?