China's financial hub Shanghai has the strongest consumption ability in the country, Chinese financial news outlet Yicai reported Sunday.

The capital city of Beijing came in second, followed in third place by Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong province on the list of top 10 Chinese cities with the strongest consumption ability.

The list was formulated on the basis of 40 major Chinese cities' total retail sales of consumer goods, an important indicator of a city's consumption ability.

Shanghai's total retail sales of consumer goods in 2018 reached 1.27 trillion yuan ($185 million), up 7.9 percent year-on-year. Online retail sales of consumer goods saw a 15.8 percent year-on-year growth to 150.67 billion yuan last year, accounting for 11.9 percent of the total, according to data from the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau.

During the same period, Beijing's total retail sales of consumer goods grew 2.7 percent to 1.17 trillion yuan, becoming the only two members of the trillion-yuan club together with Shanghai.

As a center for commerce, transportation, logistics, education and medicine in South China, Guangzhou boasts many professional retail markets and its total retail sales of consumer goods hit 925.6 billion yuan last year.

Compared with northern Chinese cities, southern Chinese cities have a faster growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods due to differences in industrial structure, according to the report.

In general, southern Chinese cities' per capita disposable income is also higher than northern Chinese cities, which need to accelerate industrial transformation, the report said.

Developing the night economy has been an important measure to stimulate the vitality of consumption and release consumption potential in various Chinese cities.