Guiyang, capital city of Guizhou Province, is named as the most beautiful city in China of 2011, according to the China Urban Competitiveness Ranking 2011 released by HK-based China Institute of City Competitiveness (CICC) on July 1.

Suzhou of Jiangsu Province and Shenyang, capital city of Liaoning Province, which failed to get a spot among last year's top 10, rank No. 2 and No. 3 on this year's list.

The list ranks Chinese cities for their beauty competitiveness in natural environment, urban planning, infrastructure, buildings, and civilization.

Apart from the beautiful city ranking, CICC also released other Chinese city rankings based on a GN China City Competitiveness Index System, which includes hundreds of specific index covering economy, social, environment and culture.

China Institute of City Competitiveness, was founded in 1998 in Hong Kong, and began to release China City Competitiveness Rankings annually since 2002.

Here are the top 10 beautiful cities according to China Institute of City Competitiveness: