China Livable Cities Rankings 2026

Snapshot 2026-09-15. The main table uses the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s 2025 composite air-quality index for 168 key cities. A lower index is cleaner. Haikou is first, Lhasa second, Fuzhou third. The CASS 2025–2026 livability chapter was not verified here. Visitor counts sit in the China travel-city rankings. Global scores sit in the global liveability rankings.

Ten cleaner cities on the 2025 composite index

Across 339 prefecture-level and above cities, 2025 annual PM2.5 was 28.0 μg/m³, down 4.4%. Good-air days were 88.1%, or 89.3% after stripping abnormal dust days. In the 168-city cleaner list, Huangshan is 4th, Guiyang 5th, Zhoushan 6th, Zhangjiakou 7th, Xiamen 8th, Huizhou 9th, Kunming 10th. Bands follow rank: 1–2 夯, 3–4 顶级, 5–6 人上人, 7–8 NPC, 9–10 拉完了. Annex decimals were not verified, so none are invented.

How this list is ranked

Snapshot 2026-09-15. The main table follows the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s 2025 full-year composite air-quality index for 168 key cities. A lower index is cleaner. The bulletin points to an annex; this draft could not read city-by-city decimals, so the order is the ten cleaner names that can be checked. That order is carried by China Environment, reprinted on 31 January 2026. Fujian’s government on 6 February 2026 confirms Fuzhou is 3rd, behind Haikou and Lhasa. Bands follow rank: 1–2 夯, 3–4 顶级, 5–6 人上人, 7–8 NPC, 9–10 拉完了. The ten higher-index names, the municipalities, the other provincial capitals and common discussion cities sit in the unranked pool. The CASS Urban Competitiveness Report’s 2025–2026 livability chapter was not verified here; a circulating “Guangzhou 447” score is unused. Visitor counts: China travel cities. Global scores: global liveability. Population: city population. Names: docs/glossaries/liveable-cities-cn-2026-glossary.md.

Ten higher-index cities

The same China Environment note puts Xianyang, Xinxiang and Kaifeng at the front of the higher-index list. Heze, Anyang, Linyi, Dezhou, Lanzhou, Hebi and Xi’an follow. Those ten sit in the unranked pool. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chengdu and the rest of the provincial capitals sit there too, for dragging. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei “2+36” group averaged 37.3 μg/m³ of PM2.5 in 2025, down 11.6%. Beijing’s year was 27.0 μg/m³.

2025 disposable-income samples

NBS: 43,377 yuan nationally. Shanghai Statistics Bureau: 91,987 yuan. The Beijing survey team: 89,090 yuan. The Hangzhou survey team: 80,017 yuan. This is not a complete capital-city income ranking. Cities without an official figure stay out.

EIU 2026 China movers

In the public summary, Shenyang scores 79 and ranks 84th globally — the highest Chinese city on that movers table. Fuzhou climbed seven places. Those global scores do not reset the air table above.

Headcounts sit in the city-population rankings.