Here's the first major poll to call bullshit on North Korea's "Global Happiness Index" which found earlier this year that China was the happiest nation in the universe and the DPRK was a very close second. In a survey of 155 countries around the world, Gallup has found China to be a rather unhappy nation. more ›

Hurun released yesterday its list of richest women in mainland China yesterday. Topping the list this year is Wu Yajun, 47, of Longhu Real Estate Development Co Ltd, with an estimated family fortune of 420 billion yuan ($6.6 billion). more ›

Swiss Bank UBS' latest "Prices and Earnings" study of purchasing power around the world has rated Oslo, Zurich and Geneva as the world’s most expensive cities based on a selected basket containing 122 goods and services. more ›

The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Asian University Rankings for 2011 are out, and the top ten positions have all been filled by universities from Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. more ›

While President Hu Jintao may be the captain of the world's second largest economy, he pays himself a very modest salary of approximately US$10,633 per annum. That's a tiny fraction of the US$184,000 that Ma Ying-Jeou, the President of Taiwan, and the US$530,000 that Donald Tsang, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, take home each year. more ›

The Shanghai Airport Authority announced yesterday that Shanghai Pudong International Airport has been ranked 5th in the world according to the Airports Council International (ACI) customer satisfaction ratings. Surveys found that passengers were particularly happy with the toilets and the waiting areas, but think transportation between the airport and downtown could use improvement. Beijing's Capital International Airport came in just ahead of us in 4th place. But what's more impressive is how in a few short years, Asian airports have managed to almost sweep the top ten. more ›

Is it our sexy Bund waterfront? The promise of haggling in old merchant gardens? The Expo (probably not)? Whatever it is, Shanghai beat out Beijing and Chengdu as the place international tourists want to visit the most in China! The poll, co-conducted by Gallup and Fudan University, found that Shanghai ranked top in most of 12 qualities, which included criteria such as attractiveness, culture, environment, individuality, integrity and investment value. It was deemed lower, however, in security. more ›

There is often a time and a place for toilet humour, but in China, it appears that there is nothing funny to be found in the lavatory department. Doug Lanksy of the Huffington Post reports that China has topped the "World's Worst Toilet" survey. more ›

Our knowledge of fashion extends to figuring out when H&M is having a sale so we've left it up to That's Magazine to shower us with the top 25 you should keep an eye on in the China fashion sphere. While we raised a finely groomed eyebrow at some of their picks (especially the supermodels - really? Unless they've become the Kate Moss/Agyness Deyn's of the Middle Kingdom, we don't see how they're influencing anything), we did also get a good run down of important people, it seems, to know if you can actually pick out a Jimmy Choo from a Manolo Blahnik. more ›

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' annual rankings for China's most competitive cities are out and Shanghai's gotten the bronze once again, coming behind Hong Kong and Shenzhen for the third time in three years. Drats! But officials in the 'Hai said that the CCP's plan to boost Shanghai into a global financial center by 2020 would definitely improve its chances for next years' rankings. Hopefully so! While Shanghai might be up there with the crème of the crop in China, compared to the rest of the world, all three cities are still lacking. Hong Kong was only listed at 26th in last year's Global Urban Competitiveness Report and Shanghai at 41st. Shenzhen, strangely enough, was placed even lower (at 64th), calling into question the different ways China and the rest of the world justifies competitiveness. more ›

In the latest Google Zeitgeist rankings which aggregates billions of search queries and ranks top search queries around the world, Edison Chen and Sarah Palin took top honours in China and the world respectively. The Beijing 2008 Olympics would have been the fastest rising search term hands down but was edged out by Edison Chen in the China category, and Sarah Palin in the Global category. more ›

Well, for one, we guess it gets you the Olympics in Beijing. And loads of infrastructural upgrades. But China was banking on the Olympics for an image makeover, and judging by Futurebrand's 2008 Country Brand Index, the results were at least somewhat encouraging. China placed 56th out of the 78 countries ranked, with 29% of respondents giving the country a "very good" or "excellent" overall rating. It did, however, make the biggest gains in overall brand rating, improving by a full 13%. more ›

In the new Worldwide Centers of Commerce study conducted by MasterCard, Shanghai emerged as the top city driving growth in emerging markets worldwide. Other Chinese cities that made it to top ten in the list were Beijing in 2nd place, Guangzhou (6th) and Shenzhen (10th), with Budapest, Kuala Lumpur, Santiago, Mexico City, Warsaw and Bangkok filling the rest of the slots. Xiamen, Chengdu, Dalian, Tianjin, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, Qingdao, Xi'an and Harbin also made it to the list of 65 cities. [h/t to China Law Blog] more ›

A study by MasterCard found that Shanghai has leapt from 32nd position to 24th in the ranks of the world's leading centres of commerce, becoming one of eight Asian cities in the top 25. more ›

Really strange results just in from the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey this year: 78% of the Chinese have sex weekly, but only 24% were able to achieve an orgasm everytime they had sex. Any sexperts out there wanna tell us what insightful analysis one can make based on the above two statistics?
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You guys ready for yet another ranking of most expensive cities? ECA International has ranked Shanghai the 8th costliest city in Asia for expats, so if they're to be taken seriously, Shanghai is cheaper than Beijing which came in 7th but more costly than Singapore which came in 9th. Seoul was the most expensive Asian city, while Guangzhou came in 10th. Also, Shanghai was named the 100th most expensive city in the world. That's 99... more ›