Ranking nations

Hundreds of travelers wait for a train February 21 at the Fuyang railway station, Anhui Province, China. Photo: IC

"If you were born today, which country would provide you the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life?" This is the question that Newsweek magazine's survey, dubbed The World's Best Countries and published in August, tried to answer.

Rana Foroohar, the deputy editor in charge of international business and economics coverage for Newsweek, organized the survey. She recently sat down with Global Times correspondent Wu Yun in New York and spoke about a range of topics, including No. 59 on the list: China, to where she plans on making her fifth trip next month.

GT: There are small and big countries such as Australia and Canada on your best-countries list. Compared with these big countries, China is far behind. What are the factors causing China to lag behind?

Foroohar: There are varieties of reasons why countries would do well or would not do well.

I will start with Australia and Canada. This exemplifies an important point in the survey. And that is that high-GDP countries with a small population can do the best. I think that is for fairly obvious reasons. Because when you have a large income yet a small population, you can obviously afford to provide better services, healthcare, education and etc.

The US and China both have a large population. The US is obviously richer on a per capita basis than China, so (the US) scored higher. I think that the fact that the US scored 11th, even though it is a quite-wealthy nation, is telling. Because when you have a large population, and you have a lot of divergence of wealth - a big income gap - it pushes you down on the list. That would be the same for China as well. Both the US and China have a large income gap.

GT: Could I conclude that population is one of the most important fac-tors in your ranking?

Foroohar: Population is an important factor in how a country was placed. A big-population country has a harder time rising to the top. In China, it is harder to meet the needs of 1.3 billion people than it would be to meet the needs of 50 million.

GT: For countries such as China and India, which have large populations and are also very large in size, how can they catch up with the countries that are ranked before them? Or is it possible for them to catch up?

Foroohar: It is possible, though it is harder. I think a good example would be to look at South Korea. In the 1960s, South Korea had an income level that was on par with Afghanistan, but South Korea is now one of the wealthiest nations in the world. It did this by focusing on its educational system. Education is the factor most closely linked with economic prosperity. So if you improve the educational system, you will move up the ranking because you will improve the economic output.

GT: The Chinese people attach importance to education no less than South Koreans. So why does China still lag so far behind?

Foroohar: Once again, that is back to the size question. Obviously, you know, there are wonderful schools in China. Tsinghua University is one of the best in the world. The top-tier students may receive a world-class education, but there are hundreds of millions who receive a much lower standard of education. And it is difficult. This is not a criticism. I don't think the US would be doing a better job if it were in the same position as China. They (the US) may be doing a worse job, actually. It just takes a long time to catch up with the size and population China has.

GT: The Chinese Government believes that China is a developing country, and your survey seems to support that position. Do you think China is still a developing country?

Foroohar: Yes, it is. We used the World Bank's definitions of developing, middle-income and wealthy countries. It is basically down to per-capita GDP. Though China is now the world's second-largest economy, when you divide all that wealth among 1.3 billion people, yes, it is still a developing country.

GT: Why isn't Iceland in the ranking? Why aren't countries such as Mongolia and North Korea included? And why do you limit the number of countries in your survey to 100 and not 150?

Foroohar: We had to leave out some important countries, because we have to get the same data set for every country. And some countries do not collect information, either completely or not in the same way as the other countries. So, unfortunately, if we could not get an apples-to-apples comparison, then we had to leave some countries out, because it would be unfair to compare them in different ways.

GT: Does this affect the objectivity of the survey?

Foroohar: I think it makes it more objective, because it would be unfair, say, to throw Mongolia into the survey if they don't have data that is comparable to other countries. That wouldn't be scientific.

GT: What are your other sources of data?

Foroohar: There are many sources, the World Bank, OECD, the International Labor Organization and many, many sources and surveys. They are on our website.