China among The Top 10 Beautiful Countries
The Global Beautiful Countries Development Report 2015 was issued on Dec 20 at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and ranks China 10th among 185 listed countries.
According to the report, America tops all other countries valued by a comprehensive index that involves 39 aspects such as ecology, economy, politics and society, etc. Following America come Germany and France. The three scored 73.16, 65.31 and 63.19 points out of 100 respectively.
"Wealth should not be the only index to evaluate a country's development path, and economic output should not be the only aim of development," said Dr Li Shidong, who headed the study.
"A beautiful country should be valued in terms of politics, economy, society, culture and ecology. We hope that this comprehensive index could be a reference for a country in designing a sound development path," Li said.
As the report shows, China's "beautiful index" has gone through a curve tendency in the past several decades – the index dropped a decade after the founding of the PRC, and rose after the country opened up in the late 1970s.
Despite ranking 10th in the list, China's ecology index was rated only 37.51, ranking 85 in the list, falling behind countries among the top 10.
The report shows that China's national average of PM10 index was 82.436 micrograms per cubic meter, which dragged China down in the ranking list to 166th spot. The report suggests that China has to transform its economic development mode, raise its eco-protection awareness across the nation, and most importantly, to take actions.
"It is hoped that the evaluation mode of Beautiful Countries could help countries around the world to design a more development path. Adjusted, the index could also be applied in provincial evaluations," said Li.
The Beautiful Country study project was carried out by experts from China's State Forestry Administration, Tsinghua University and Beijing Forestry University. The project was initiated to evaluate the development mode of countries in the world.
The top ten Beautiful countries are America, Germany, France, Russia, Britain, Canada, Spain, Italy, Australia and China.
