The article links to an interactive map that compares each province with its country equivalent, and ranks them in order of performance. I have embedded it on this site here.
This is what it tells us about Gansu's 'equivalent country' and its ranking in the list of Chinese provinces:
- GDP: $59.6bn (nearest equivalent is Croatia, ranked 6th from bottom in China)
- GDP per person: $4,031 (Iraq, 2nd from bottom)
- Population: 26.4m (Ghana, 12th from bottom)
- Exports: $0.8bn (Nepal, ranked 3rd from bottom)