Eastern Chinese cities better in sustainable development: report

Coastal and eastern Chinese cities performed better in sustainable development last year, a research report on the country's urban sustainability revealed on Wednesday.

The China Urban Sustainability Index (USI) showed that the top ten cities were Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Dalian, Fuzhou, Beijing, Changsha and Yantai, most of which lie in eastern and coastal regions.

The report attributed the reasons to earlier opening up, more investment and foreign trade as well as geographical positioning.

The index used 23 indicators in economy, society, resource and environment to rank sustainable development performances of 185 Chinese cities.

Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of top performers stood at about 100,000 yuan (16,237 U.S. dollars), the report said.

The index is a research project undertaken by the McKinsey Global Institute and the Urban China Initiative (UCI), a think tank co-founded by McKinsey Company, Columbia University and Tsinghua University in 2010.

Jonathan Woetzel, co-chair of the UCI and a director of McKinsey, said that although GDP per capita is correlative with sustainability, a city has to focus on other factors like environmental protection when its GDP reaches a certain level.

According to the report, the 11 most developed cities cover 155 million people, 21 percent of China's total urban population, which posed huge pressure on the cities to improve their development models.

Meanwhile, improvements in sustainability are possible at earlier stages of economic development, which needed better cooperation with bigger neighboring cities, the report added.