Industrial hub

Mundell said Chengdu should consolidate its role as a manufacturing base and continue to foster investment in order to maintain its advantages.

He also expressed confidence in China's economy.

"Growth has been spectacular in Chengdu with a huge increase in foreign investment and exports," said Mundell.

Ellen Kullman, chief executive officer of DuPont, said that the company built a plant in Chengdu last year while jointly founding a research institute with Sichuan University to develop new fire- and heat-resistant materials.

"The western city is now a hub for many manufacturing industries and we are glad to have set up a plant here," she told China Daily in an earlier interview.

Among all provincial capitals, Chengdu has the strongest growth rate in the manufacturing sector, said officials with the city's statistics bureau.

The sector's 13.7 percent growth was a major contributor to the city's GDP in the first quarter as it increased by 10.5 percent from the same period last year to 215.1 billion yuan, they added.

Those figures far exceed the nationwide growth in GDP of 7.7 percent and the 10.2 percent registered by Sichuan province.

Cities such as Chengdu in western China are maintaining resilient momentum, Shi Lei, an economics professor at Fudan University, told media.

"Looking to the future, they may become engines of growth when export-oriented coastal cities encounter more headwind from shrinking external demand," Shi said.

Qing Yujiao contributed to the story.