Editor's note: The following article was translated and edited from an article that appeared in China Economic Weekly. The article analyses several findings from the 2011-2012 CCTV Economic Life Survey, in particular the dichotomy between northern and southern cities for "happiness" rankings and "leisure" rankings. The article also defines an income level "leisure time threshold" and concludes that the majority of Chinese are currently stuck in a "spare cash paradox", in which they are spending the majority of their time working and making money, but they don't make enough money to live a leisurely life.

Image: finance.people

Late last month, CCTV's financial channel released the results of its sixth annual Economic Life Survey (CCTV经济生活大调查2011－2012), which was conducted in cooperation with the National Bureau of Statistics, the China Postal Group, the National Development Research Institute, Peking University and the China Leisure Economic Research Centre at Beijing International Studies University. The survey, which took more than four months to complete, depicts China's economic trends in 2011 and searches for the internal driving forces of the country's future development. A new feature in this year's survey was the additional inquiry of people's leisure time and leisure activities. In this way, the survey doesn't solely use consumerism, public attention and economic expectations to illustrate an objective opinion – it also considers that leisure and livelihood can more clearly reflect details in the foundation of China's future economic transition.

Are northern cities happier than southern cities?

According to the survey research model, "happiness" in China is primarily determined by personal income, as well as other factors such as amount of leisure time, health, emotional wellbeing etc. The survey results show that the top ten capital cities in terms of "leisure" are: Guiyang, Haikou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Lhasa, Chengdu, Chongqing, Taiyuan, Fuzhou and Changsha. Meanwhile, the top ten capital cities in terms of "happiness" are: Lhasa, Taiyuan, Hefei, Tianjin, Changsha, Hohhot, Shijiazhuang, Jinan, Yinchuan, and Chongqing. Four of the cities appear top-ranked on both the "leisure" and "happiness" lists: Lhasa, Chongqing, Taiyuan and Changsha. These cities were highly considered both for their high-income levels, as well as for their relative abundance of leisure time and leisure activities. The other six cities that appeared on the "leisure" list, due to lower income levels (as well as the other above mentioned factors) didn't rank highly on the "happiness" list.

There are a few things worth noting about the make-up of these two lists. First, of the top ten "leisure" cities, eight of them are in southern China (Guiyang, Haikou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Fuzhou and Changsha) – cities well known for their beautiful urban environments and booming service industries, their rapidly developing leisure/tourism industries, as well as their great potential for sustainability and healthily development in the future. Second, of the top ten "happiness" cities, seven of them are in northern China: (Lhasa, Taiyuan, Tianjin, Hohhot, Shijiazhuang, Jinan, Yinchuan), which in recent years have seen remarkable GDP growth, as well as increasing income levels that have lead to an increase in people's happiness. However, as their happiness continues to increase along with the size of their pay checks, it will become more heavily influenced by things like leisure, health and emotional quality.

The "leisure threshold" is an annual income of 100,000 Yuan

Big bustling cities always have a few things in common: large foreign populations, a wide assortment of fast-food restaurants, more transportation options, flourishing businesses, more wealthy people, a "job-hopping" phenomenon, brand worship, higher rate of traffic accidents, longer lines, people worrying about their physical and spiritual health etc. Meanwhile "leisure" cities live a slower paced life. While each ‘leisure' city has its differences, there are a number of items which people from southern cities deem as essential such as sitting around old-fashioned square tables, drinking a pot of strong green tea, playing mah-jong, sitting under the shade or in front of an entrance; even eating and drinking are treated like a form of "work". Of course, the slower pace of life in "leisure" cities does not imply that these people are simply loafing about, nor does it imply that they are necessarily part of China's elite "leisurely rich" class.

According to the CCTV Economic Life Survey data, those with the least amount of leisure time are commonly concentrated in busy regions like the Liaodong (Liaoning and Dongbei) Peninsula, the Yangtze River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin area. It is no coincidence that these regions are currently home to some of China's fastest developing cities and China's highest income levels. From the distribution of cities in the survey, we can see that the researchers often cited that a "spare cash paradox" (闲钱悖论) – meaning that one is unable to have leisure and income simultaneously, and that leisure time is generally quite low in high income areas – is quite prevalent in China. In particular, China's highest per capita income cities (Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou) all fared quite poorly on the survey's list of 343 "leisure" cities and towns: Beijing's leisure-ness was ranked 239th, Shanghai's leisure-ness was ranked 177th, and Guangzhou's leisure-ness came in at 95th, actually making it one of the more balanced cities in China in terms of leisure and income.

Leisure time is the alternative to work time and being quite valuable, needs to be purchased using one's income. Before the income level exceeds the "leisure threshold", and before one has reached a safety net in terms of social security levels, people are unable to realise their goal of balancing leisure and wealth. Their only options are to sacrifice their income in exchange for leisure, or to reduce their leisure to achieve higher income. The 2011-2012 survey suggests that one needs an annual income of more than 100,000 Yuan to cross this "leisure threshold". Of the respondents with an annual income less than 20,000 Yuan, 12.01 percent said that they didn't have any leisure time, while the majority said they only had 1-2 hours of leisure time (per week). Meanwhile, of the respondents with an annual income of over 100,000 Yuan, only 5.87 percent said that they didn't have leisure time, while the majority said they had 2-3 hours (per week) – and 33.87% said they had more than three hours per week. In total, about 70% of the respondents claimed an annual income of under 50,000 Yuan, which is to say that a majority of Chinese are still struggling with the aforementioned "spare cash paradox".

If it is true that during the past few decades Chinese have possessed a seemingly insatiable enthusiasm for learning how to work and how to make money, then perhaps they are now finally beginning to learn how to play and how to enjoy their free time.

Source: finance.people
 

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Keywords: CCTV Economic Life Survey happiest Chinese cities China leisure economy trends