It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest ranking has named Beijing the most liveable city in China.
Yes, that’s right – the Chinese capital which, when the news came out on Wednesday, was suffocating under a dark grey blanket of smog that hadn’t lifted for days and which has been covering it most of this summer.
Of course it always depends on what you measure. Even Beijing’s notorious air quality can be classified as “fine” by the municipal government on a day when the skies are a sickly white and you have difficulty breathing. On such a day, the US Embassy often has much higher readings (including the notorious ‘Crazy Bad’ reading) because its equipment measures much finer particles.