城市排名北京垫底！你敢信么？

20160615ou 一中两外锵锵三人行 今日话题：城市排名北京垫底！你敢信么？ BK: A new livability ranking has come out for Chinese cities, and we’ll give you a hint – Beijing is not at the top. NL: I wouldn’t be surprised that it wasn’t right the way at the top, but I’m quite surprised at where it has come, out of the top forty cities, which is right at the bottom. WY: I’m quite surprised, frankly, because I would say that it can be in the top ten, in my heart. NL: Somewhere in the middle, at least. WY: So I’m surprised! And the report says that Qingdao can be the most livable city in China, and surprisingly Beijing is said to be the least livable city. So this is from a recent report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. BK: I would definitely guess Kunming would be in there, because that city – I’m not working for anything, but I’ve heard – is a wonderful place, I’ve been meaning to go there, it’s supposed to be the city of eternal spring. It’s never really too hot or too cold. WY: Bingo! That’s number two. And coming up next, Sanya, Dalian, Weihai, and then for the next five: Suzhou, Zhuhai, Xiamen, Shenzhen and Chongqing. BK: Right, so as Nick was just pointing out, coastal cities tend to do pretty darn well there, obviously seven of the top ten were coastal cities, and the ones that aren’t, again, there’s Kunming, there’s Suzhou, which is well-renowned for its beauty in many ways. WY: And about the terms and conditions that they really value, it’s about better natural environment, safety, medical services, and transportation. NL: Okay, so this is what goes into deciding how livable a city is. WY: Back in the year 2015, last year, in August, the Economist also pointed out another ranking of the most livable cities in the world, and in the Chinese mainland, Beijing ranks number one. So you can see there has been quite a contrast. And also, why most people would love to live in Beijing or choose Beijing as their workplace, possibly is because as a first-tier city, it has the best education resources, and most top universities are in Beijing, and also the top hospitals in China are centered in Beijing. I think those two factors are very important. BK: Right, Beijing is not only the political capital, obviously, the official capital of China here, but also is, in many ways, the cultural capital and the educational capital as well. NL: It all comes down to, as you mentioned earlier, what criteria we use to decide what is the most livable part of a city or which are the most livable cities. WY: Many corporate companies, especially those kinds of international companies, would set their headquarters either in Beijing or in Shanghai, so that means here, you might have more working opportunities, and at the same time it’s not only a job vacancy but also it’s for further personal skills development. If you just work here you might learn more, compared with your living in other cities. NL: I think these things kind of go in cycles, though. Obviously Beijing is the capital of China, hence all these international companies and also Chinese companies would choose to put their headquarters here, which means that the jobs are here. Then, all the people move here, then this creates the problems that we are saying make it a less livable city: the traffic, the pollution, the crowdedness … BK: We’ve been talking about people, and all those sorts of things, and that makes a big impact as well, the kind of people that go there, the kind of human capital, not only by being able to learn things, but by interacting with these other sorts of people. And, as part of that, international destinations, because some of these cities are quite livable and are big economic centers, but they’re not necessarily international hubs, whereas places like Beijing and Shanghai do tend to be like that.