A night scenery of Beijing [Photo: lvyou114.com]
"Foreign Policy," the American magazine of politics, economics, and ideas, released its annual Global Cities Index, which took aim at Beijing's pride, ranking the city at number 15.
The rankings were not done by city size alone, but also by the influence a city yields outside its own borders. The magazine analyzed 65 cities with more than 1 million people across every region of the globe, while looking at the sway those cities have over global markets, culture, and innovation.
On this year's list, Beijing outranks capitals from well-developed countries, such as Berlin, Madrid, and Vienna, and becomes the only capital of a developing country among the top fifteen. Another city in China, Shanghai, comes in at number 20.
"Even big cities like New York have problems such as a gap between rich and poor, population expansion and terrible traffic. Beijing is spurring with a long accumulation in the process of making itself an international metropolis," says Zhao Hong, director of the Economy Research Center of Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.
According to the report, New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong, the generally acknowledged megalopolises, are ranked in the top 5 of the world's most global cities. Five of the world's 10 most global cities are in Asia and the Pacific: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, and Seoul. The report pointed out that more global clout will move from the West to the East.
