China's large cities appear to be busily competing for the title of "the country's most congested city". The new leader in this contest is Shanghai, which overtook Hangzhou in the second quarter of the year; the two are followed by Beijing in third place.

The ranking comes from the traffic analysis for major Chinese cities in the second quarter of 2014, which was published by the Chinese online service AutoNavi map. The result is based on the analysis of data from 300 million GPS users.

The city with the highest current traffic load in China is Shanghai, but the situation in Chongqing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Shenyang, Chengdu and Jinan is little better. Moreover, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Jinan appear for the first time in the jammed city list.

Hangzhou less congested

Hangzhou was China's most-jammed city in the first quarter. However, in the second quarter, the congestion delay index fell significantly, by eleven percent. The reason could be traffic control measures which were taken by the city government in May. According to the AutoNavi map report, the congestion delay index has since declined from 17.28 to 13.92 minutes during rush hour in Hangzhou.