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.