The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has come up with a kind of grading of the major Chinese cites in terms of what it costs to be a white-collar worker, conveniently redefined as having a decent life and a desirable living style. Global Voices summarizes the report and the unavoidable debate on the internet.
While the report throws apples, pears and grapes nicely in one basket, it does give a kind of ranking between the different cities in China.
Of course Hong Kong and Macao are in a different league altogether. I was missing Taipei here, you would expect that to be present even if it is only for political reasons.
What I found striking was the low position of Guangzhou, that has been at least on par with Shanghai and Beijing for a long time and sometimes (depending on your way of counting) even ahead of them.
I knew Wenzhou was doing well, but did not expect the city to end up already that high.
The internet users strongly disagree with the report and because they include in a "decent life" also driving a car and paying mortgage, often they find the figures too low.
Update: By now the reports seems to be a fake, nothing unusual in China. Danwei points at a story in the China Digital News on the issue that for one reason or another doesn't make it to my side of the GFW.
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