Hefei, capital city of Anhui Province, stood out as the fourth most competitive city in scientific and technological innovations, or high-quality basic research in China, trailing only Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, according to the Nature Publishing Index 2010 China released by the UK-based Nature Publishing Group (NPG).

In terms of city rankings, the first of its kind for the index, the top 10 cities make up about 88 percent of China's contribution to Nature journals in 2010, and house the top 20 prestigious research institutions in China.

The index ranked the research institutions and cities in China on the basis of their outputs in all of the NPG's leading research journals in 2010 with comparative data for 2009. It indicates that the number of Chinese authored-papers published in Nature journals surged from just six in 2000 to 149 in 2010, a 25-fold increase.

In terms of institution rankings, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) came in as No.1 with 40 papers, followed by Tsinghua University (16 papers) and University of Science and Technology of China (7 papers).

Of the Top 20 institutions, 4 were from Beijing, including the CAS, Tsinghua University, Peking University and the National Institute of Biological Sciences. While 2 were from Anhui, namely, the USTC and Anhui Medical University (13th, 3 papers).

Following are the top 20 Chinese cities for high-quality basic research:

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