We're No. 118! Beijing Fails to Crack Top 100 on List of Best Cities for Expats

Kipp Whittaker | Mar 4, 2016 5:30 pm | 1 comment | 4223 reads

The annual Quality of Living Rankings from Mercer were released late in late February, and our fair city comes in at a middling no. 118 of the 230-city global study that polls expatriates from around the globe.

Number 118 puts us on par with such wonderful expat oases as Rabat, Morocco (116); Amman, Jordan (120) and Manaus, Brazil (125).

These quality of life lists appraise factors such as personal safety and security, health, transport infrastructure, availability of consumer goods, and adequate housing, schooling, and recreation opportunities, and compare them to other cities around the globe. When these factors are combined, the list helps foreign companies determine living costs to compensate expat employees when they move to a new country for the first time. This is just the gist, as we’re not sure of the other kind of sorcery or oracles Mercer question to acquire these results.

In this 2016 ranking with Vienna, Austria at the no. 1 spot, and Baghdad, Iraq at the bottom at no. 230. Beijing stands right in the middle at no. 118, just topping Guangzhou.

Shanghai appears to be a step ahead, taking the no. 101 spot, just behind Taichung, Taiwan. The top five cities in Asia are Singapore, Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama, and Osaka, followed by Hong Kong at no. 70, and Seoul, South Korea at no. 73 (up one place from last year).

Looking at the results here compared to the 2015 rankings, there is little change between much in the Asian-Pacific category. Maybe they could give our cities some extra credit points for consistency.

One area where Beijing fared pretty well in was personal safety, which is undeniably one of the key factors in determining expat quality of living. Here Beijing ranks 97, ahead of Seoul (115), New Delhi (142), and Jakarta (172). Hong Kong rests even more safely at no. 37; and then there’s Taipei at no. 78.

On the other side, we probably didn’t do very well in areas dealing with health and other medical considerations, where pollution along with access to decent healthcare at a fair price isn’t helping (or frankly worsening) our current ranking.

But really the formula for Beijing is quite simple: solve the traffic and pollution problems and up shoots those rankings.

However, these factors will not change overnight, so we'll have to make do with our average position for years to come. Cheers to mediocrity! And if you're ready for a change, there's always (yawn) Vienna.

More stories by this author here.

Email: danielkippwhittaker@thebeijinger.com

Photos: Flickr, Mercer

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PatrickLi's picture PatrickLi Submitted by Guest on Sat, 03/05/2016 - 09:30

I haven't been able to access my email account for 2 days. Isn't 118 already a pretty generous ranking?

With respect to personal safety, Beijing is indeed extraordinarily safe in terms of no mass shooting, burglary or robbery---these things are easily quantified and could be easily used in statistics and rankings, but Beijing is unsafe in many other more related aspects such as theft, fraud, bullying, sexual harrassment and school violence. These crimes are rampant in Beijing but the report rate remains very low, especailly for theft and sexual harrassment.

I hear from my female colleagues about being sexually harrassed on subway cars almost every few days, but most of them choose to remain silent, and I feel very ashamed because apparently these vicitims don't even bother to call for help because they know that everyone has this stay-away-from-trouble mindset and no one will help, and it's the city where I was born and grew up. 

The other thing is theft. I had dinner at Yonghe King at Jianwai Soho last night around 6.30 pm. I put my backpack on the floor by my feet and I was listening to a podcast. I was apparently so into the podcast show and when I checked on my backpack, it's not there, and I literally panicked because the first thought that popped up in my mind is "damn it somemone has just stolen it!" The next second I was relieved because it happened to be that I left my bag on the floor at my right hand side and I checked my left hand side. And after that I didn't even dare to put it on the floor or on another seat any longer, so I had put it on my lap---you can imagine how uncomfortable it is to eat with a backpack on your lap, and I'm not in middle-of-nowhere Fengtai, but right at Guomao---I found Jianwai Soho is gradually turning into an inner city slum. Check it out at 6.30pm and see if you feel safe by walking around. I have rarely felt such unsafe even at other metropolitan downtowns like NYC, Tokyo or Chicago.

We sometimes subconsciously lower our standard way too easily when it comes to Beijing because we already have low expectations. 

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