China's financial center Shanghai provides the best business environment for small and medium-sized enterprises, Yicai reported on Tuesday.

Following Shanghai were Shenzhen and Nanjing, which respectively ranked second and third on the list of Chinese cities offering a good business development environment based on a comprehensive assessment, according to a report on SMEs development environment in 2020.

China's capital city of Beijing grabbed the fifth place after Guangzhou, while Wuhan in Central China's Hubei province and Dalian in Northeast China's Liaoning province took the 19th and 31st spots, respectively, according to the report released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology at the first forum on SMEs development environment.

Nine Chinese cities on the top 10 list of those providing a good business environment for SMEs are from East China, the report said.

Thirty-six cities were chosen for the investigation with data mainly from local government reports, enterprise online surveys, field investigations, third-party tests and publicized statistical data materials from government websites, media stations and authorized organizations.

To obtain detailed data, investigators visited about 20 cities, talked to over 600 enterprises, and checked more than 400 websites for 400,000 pieces of information, said Shan Lipo, director of China Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Development Promotion Center.

The assessment includes five first-level indicators -- market environment, legal environment, financing environment, innovation environment and policy environment -- as well as 21 second-level indicators and 36 third-level indicators, according to the report.

Small and medium-sized enterprises are an integral part of the market and their development has a close relationship with local cities' business environment, so learning about the business climate will be vital to the success of businesses, especially SMEs.