International Cities' Blue Book states Beijing's ecological index is last but one, approaching extreme value which means an uninhabitable degree. 

Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Social Sciences Academic Press hold an event, International Cities' Blue Book: International Cities' Development Report (2014), in Beijing today. The Blue Book points out that Beijing's ecological crisis have become the biggest weakness for city upgrading.

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 The Blue Book shows that Beijing's ecological index is last but one only is higher than Moscow. It is notable that among the 40 international countries in the ecological index ranking, Hong Kong, 34, Shanghai, 36, and Beijing, 39, of China are on the list. Moscow is in the last place. The report claimed that it is "because of natural environment which means harsh chill and long winter."

The report also shows that from the point of environmental management indicators, both Beijing's health index and safety index are lower than average level. This indicated that Beijing's public health services are in short supply, and residents' health condition is not optimistic as well as crime rate is relatively high. In the meanwhile, Beijing's political rights' indicator approaches to the highest degree, meaning that there are a large amount of governmental organizations, headquarters of non-government organizations, and embassies as well as think tanks are all gathered in Beijing. The reason probably is because Beijing is the capital of a powerful country.

This blue book first builds an index system of international cities' upgrading conditions, examining the 40 main countries' upgrading trends by quantification data. The report proposes an annual topic of "International cities' 2.0 upgrading" and compares the ranking from 18 indicators of 6 dimensions such as economic, society, culture, government, ecology, and space based on international cities' upgrading conditions.

Remarkably, as China's capital, Beijing has the society upgrading index is only behind Paris, raking #2, higher than Tokyo and London. Report explains, "Surprisingly, Beijing's inclusive process could be compared favorably with Paris and London. The main reason is the published low Gini Coefficient. This has something to do with the way of collecting data and also with the low-price but sufficient basic public services (transportation and food) provided by government. "