Take a taxi in Shanghai and you will pay more than you would
for a ride of (1) ______ distance in Beijing.
(1) ______. Buy a beer at an international bar in
Shanghai, and the same holds true. Go out for an Italian, German or French meal
and ditto. And yet, according to a survey released yesterday by
Mercer Human (2) ______ Consulting,
(2)
______. Beijing is the most expensive city on the Chinese
mainland.
"There
are some things that might be more expensive in Shanghai,
but the (3) ______ we have is based
on a basket of goods,"
(3) ______. said Ilya Bonick, Mercer’s regional head of
information services. Mercer’s cost of living survey is one of
a handful of annual reports
produced by international (4) ______.
(4) ______. It takes into consideration such things as
housing, food, (5) ______, clothing, household goods and transportation.
(5)
______. Meals of noodles or jiaozi are not included in the
report whereas products (6) ______ are likely to buy and are
available in all the cities surveyed, such as
Coca-Cola and Pantene shampoo.
(6) ______. This year, Hong
Kong, the most expensive Chinese city, took ninth (7) ______.
(7) ______.
The top three in the world are Tokyo, Osaka and London.
The good news is that Chinese cities are getting cheaper, driven by a US
dollar (8) ______ in value.
(8) ______. "Chinese cities have dropped
significantly in the rankings as the (9) ______ is pegged to the US dollar and
has therefore been affected by the dollar’s depreciation," said
Marie-Laurence Sepede, Mercer’s research manager, in a release.
(9)
______. "The shift in the China ranking is the most surprising,"
Bonick said. "We have seen it become more (10) ______."
(10) ______.
Another factor for the drop, said Bonick, is the wider availability of
products the company uses to measure.