(Yicai) March 29 -- China’s eastern megacity Shanghai and Suzhou in Jiangsu province have tied for the most entries in a list of the country’s top 100 private sector industrial clusters.

Shanghai and Suzhou each had five such clusters as of the end of last year, according to a ranking jointly released by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce's China Society for the Study of Private Economy and Beijing Shangqi Digital Technology.

Nine other cities, including Changzhou, Foshan, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou, had more than three clusters each.

The ranking includes around 1.8 million private firms, of which nearly 50,000 are 'national high-tech enterprises,' 3,000 are 'little giants’ -- or small companies with a high market share in niche sectors, strong innovative capacity, and core technologies -- and 1,800 are listed businesses.

Jiangsu ranked top among China’s provinces with 18 private sector industrial clusters, followed by southeastern Zhejiang with 14 and southern Guangdong with 12. 

China's eastern regions had 68 of the top 100 clusters, while 21 were in central areas, mainly in Anhui, Jiangxi, and Hunan provinces. Ten clusters were located in western China, with Chongqing and Sichuan province having the most, and one was in northeastern Liaoning province.

Regarding the industrial structure, the high-end manufacturing sectors -- mainly equipment, new energy vehicles, integrated circuits, biomedicine, and power batteries -- accounted for 70 of the top 100 clusters.

The number of registered private firms in China exceeded 59 million by the end of last year, up 16 percent from the previous year, the report showed. Guangdong had the most such firms, at more than 7.2 million. 

Private companies have become the main force behind China's technological innovation, with more than 460,000 'national-level high-tech enterprises' as of last December, of which private firms made up 94 percent. 

Editors: Xu Wei, Martin Kadiev