Suzhou was selected as the happiest prefecture-level city in China in 2024 at the Happiest Cities Forum 2024 recently concluded in Shanghai. Why is Suzhou the happiest?
Suzhou is a city with well-developed industries with international competitiveness. It is home to 160,000 industrial enterprises and has established 3 trillion-level industrial clusters of electronic information, equipment manufacturing and advanced materials and 6 national advanced manufacturing clusters.
Suzhou is one of the most open cities in China. There are more than 18,000 foreign-funded companies and nearly 500 projects invested by 175 overseas Fortune 500 companies, with the cumulative actual use of foreign capital exceeding 160 billion US dollars, ranking third in the country.
Suzhou has been making solid efforts to cultivate and attract talents. The city had built a 3.9 million-strong talent pool and gathered a high-level workforce of 420,000 people. It has been honored as “China’s Best City for Talent Attraction” and “China’s Best City for Employment Promotion” for 5 years in a row.
Aiming to foster a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment, Suzhou has become one of the best places to invest in the Yangtze River Delta and even in China. It has been rated as “the city with the best reputation for business environment” in the large survey of private enterprises conducted by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC) for five consecutive years.
The people’s happiness and well-being has been the ultimate goal of the high-quality development of Suzhou which spends more than 80 percent of its general public budget every year on ensuring and improving people’s wellbeing. At present, the average life expectancy of local residents has exceeded 84 years. The city has built the first national eco-park urban cluster and has been honored as a “National Civilized City” and received the UN Habitat Scroll of Honor Award for improving its environment. In addition, it has been selected as one of the “Most Attractive Chinese Cities in the Eyes of Foreign Experts” for 12 consecutive years.
Located in the core area of the Yangtze River Delta, Suzhou boasts convenient transportation. The city now has 9 rail transit lines as well as a number of high-speed railways which have cut travel time to Shanghai to just 20 minutes and to other major cities in the surrounding areas to no more than one hour.
The ancient city of Suzhou has a history of more than 2,500 years. Suzhou classical gardens and the Suzhou section of the Grand Canal have been inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List. A number of local crafts and fine arts have been selected into the UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In 2018, Suzhou was awarded the title of “World Heritage Model City” by the Organization of World Heritage Cities (OWHC).
