A latest survey shows that foreign nationals working in Beijing have a high appraisal for Beijing's residential environment and bilingual sign services, 70 percent of them are satisfied with Beijing's study and living conditions, but are not very happy with citizens' overall quality. Beijing citizens can just get a mere 3 score in terms of 5 score grade in the appraisal. Meanwhile, most Beijing residents and foreigners do not think Beijing has been an international metropolis.
According to the survey, most Beijing people hold that Beijing still has a large gap compared with international metropolises, its afforesting, hygiene, water and air quality has not yet come up to the standard as an international metropolis, traffic service and public facilitates construction do not perfectly satisfy people either. In addition, citizens' self-appraisal for their knowledge level, behavior, language civilization are at 2.9, 2.8, 2.7 scores, respectively.
According to Beijing Evening News, the top 11 cities considered to be international metropolises are Paris, New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, Vancouver, Rome, Berlin and Vienna.
Majority of Beijing people support the city to be built into an international metropolis, and Beijing's current software and hardware conditions have played a very solid foundation for its development.
Some people in Beijing regard that first important things Beijing should solve is to improve its environment, enhance infrastructure construction, raise citizens' overall quality, promote international commercial cultural exchange, develop international tourism industry, send more students to study abroad.
In the survey, when asked about what is the efficient way to further improve people's awareness for international metropolis, about half of respondents hope to raise education level and enhance people's overall quality.
The 2008 Olympics bid will greatly speed up Beijing's steps toward an international metropolis. The city has decided to input 180 billion yuan for infrastructure construction within 15 years and 142 key projects to be built to narrow the gap with international large cities.
(People's Daily 08/27/2001)
