I read on a few China-focused blogs this morning about a report put out by the “China Institute of City Competitiveness”. First of all, why would there be such an organization? Any way.. Some of the blog postings are:
- China Law Blog’s post entitled Beautiful China Cities. I Know It When I See It.
- bezdomny expatria’s post relevantly entitled make sure you’re sitting down…
The report mentioned above was covered by the China Daily, China’s English “Newspaper”, if you could call it that. Read the article here.
Hmm, sorry. Their evaluation criteria is simply bogus. And the scoreing against the criteria is rediculous - of course they don’t give the detailed results, so… Take this whole thing with a grain of salt.
Preservation of historical monuments - Ok, this is pretty good… but they did destroy the city walls back in the 60’s (?) to make way for the disaster they call 2nd Ring Road. .. That was just shameful.
Forest coverage - Um, no. “Forests”? They have small patches of trees here and there, and trees lining the streets in many places, but I wouldn’t call them forests. Translation error?
Air quality - Need I say anything about this?! You know what, as I write this, have a look what it looks like outside, and you can be the judge of that:
The transportation network - Sucks! Plain sucks! Subway is a joke (and will be a joke until the new lines are finished in like 10 years - too little too late). Buses are horrible. Impossible to get cabs on rainy days… Traffic is a monumental pain in the rear..
City life - What does this mean? Bars? Ok, they’re good. You can still find cheap food and drinks around town… But I am not sure that is what they meant…
Public space - Parks? Yes, there are parks… And I don’t have the statistics of park size compared with other cities, but my idea of parks are large areas of lush grass with trees, running tracks, etc. They don’t have that here. Oh, and be sure to stay off the grass! Only for looking!
GDP - Good I guess…. I don’t know the numbers.
Any way, I think this is a ploy to prop up Beijing’s appeal ahead of the Olympics. But any 5-year old could figure that out.
I think the usage of the word “Beautiful” is a bit lost in the translation. Why would Beautiful have anything to do with GDP or transportation?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Beijing. Seriously. It’s a great place to live, if you can ignore the negatives for a moment. But I know a farce when I see one.
Entries (RSS)
September 14th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Hm, sounds like your are quite loaded today. Just remember this is China, they take everything to a new level. If somebody in Germany writes a fan-page about LittleTown, this is the Chinese equivalent it is just their way of local pride.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Nah, I’m my normal happy self today
September 14th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Chris, thanks for the link. I have to disagree with you on the public transport though. It’s a work in progress and a long ways from catching up with somewhere like Hong Kong, but it’s still a reasonably good system. What makes getting around difficult is not so much the public transport as the traffic. But maybe I’m saying that because where I come from public transport is just as big a joke as the China Daily.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Beautiful? I’m thinking Chicago … San Francisco … Seattle … maybe Vienna?
Beijing doesn’t pop to mind, and neither does Shanghai, which would be closer to the objective.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Chris Waugh, true - traffic is a large large part of the disaster. But traffic and transportation are closely linked and rely upon each other. So if you don’t have a good mass transit system to provide a useful alternative to the surface-road traffic problems, then the whole system is crap.
JAL, this study was China specific.
September 27th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I don’t think there is a beautiful city in China… apart from HK and thats cool because of a mix between British and Chinese culture, and a lack of horrible communist architecture.
The chinese have a different idea of beauty. I went to Hangzhou because I was told that it was really beautiful and was very dissapointed when I got there to find a normal looking Chinese city with a big lake. I was even dissapointed with Hainan, which I was told was heaven on earth. It’s nothing compared to Thailand, or Egypt (these have the best beaches I have been to).
I too enjoy living in Beijing (I have my moments when I really need to get out though), but its far from a beautiful city.
September 27th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Actually, I take back my first comment.. about China not having a beautiful city, considering I haven’t been to that many. I have been to all of the ones that are supposed to be beautiful and I have found them to be just average.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I guess some parts of some cities in China could be considered beautiful, it depends what you like…. I live in Hong Kong, some places are beautiful, some not….