Haimen has been included as a county-level city candidate for the list of 2019 China’s Happiest Cities, according to an Aug 13 report in the Haimen Daily.

The happiest domestic cities selection, which is in its 13th iteration, was co-launched by the National Bureau of Statistics and CCTV.

In 2018, the China Happy Cities Laboratory, set up by the Liaowang Institute, developed a city happiness index system based on big data.

The indicator system collects urban portraits and human behavior data from 100 prefecture-level cities and 100 county-level cities (districts), collecting more than 10 trillion data samples.

These include nine first-level indicators -- which are an employment index, resident income index, quality of life index, eco-environmental index, urban attractiveness index, public safety index, education index, traffic index and a medical health index – as well as more than 100 secondary sub-indicators.

Organizers said the data covers more than 95 percent of netizens, covering nearly 100 categories of user interest tags such as education, travel, health, employment, and consumption, which are scientific and credible.

The organizing committee for the selection event then conducts public surveys, sample surveys, as well as big data collections and material declarations.

Organizers added that the results of the survey will be generated by a combination of public subjective surveys and objective data surveys, and by professional evaluation agencies and review committees.

The winners will be announced in November.

No reason to be gloomy: a bright and cheerful day in Haimen city, Nantong, in eastern Jiangsu province [Photo/Haimen Daily]