USUALLY Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the three most developed Chinese cities, monopolize three of the first five places in any ranking of economic competitiveness. They are commonly known as Bei Shang Guang for short.

For a long time Bei Shang Guang has been a magnet for students fresh out of university. Promising higher pay and a brighter future, the three cities are prime places to work and live for ambitious young people, who are often nicknamed bei piao or hai piao, meaning migrants living in Beijing and Shanghai. There is no corresponding term for Guangzhou.

Despite the financial pressure and stress of life in these cities, as well as a risk of thwarted aspirations, young people continued to be drawn to them like pilgrims - until recently.

Last year saw a series of news reports about youths fleeing the hustle and bustle of Bei Shang Guang they once called home. All of a sudden, it seems the former land of opportunity and hope has lost much appeal. Collective frustration with reality in big cities is given an outlet in "Beijing Beijing," a rock song wildly popular for its reflection of the distance between dream and reality in the Chinese capital.

A recently released survey also lent credence to the view that Bei Shang Guang has slid a little in terms of attractiveness, or in the words of the survey, "harmony."

Lack of harmony

The outgrowth of the survey, conducted by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is a bluebook issued on May 19, titled "2013 Bluebook on Chinese Cities' Competiveness - New Criteria, Constructing Sustainable, Competitive, Ideal Cities."

The rather lengthy title of the report belies its concise, unconventional findings. For the very first time, Bei Shang Guang wasn't short-listed among the first 10 results. Beijing ranked 14th, Guangzhou came in 19th while Shanghai fell even further behind, at 21st. The first and runner-up places went to Hong Kong and Macau.

Only last year, the three cities still enjoyed the pride of place, with Beijing ranking 3rd, Shanghai 4th and Guangzhou 6th, respectively.

The three poster children of Chinese economic vitality scored so badly this year mainly because, according to Yang Jie, a chief author of the Bluebook, they scored low in harmony, a studied topic. Yang named two reasons for the lapses. First, the hukou system, or household registration, is much more rigid in Bei Shang Guang than in second- and third-tier cities, resulting in less equal opportunity. Second, crime is higher in the "Big Three" cities than in others.

The second reason is not hard to understand, as higher crime rate is a natural byproduct as cities grow in size. As for the first reason, lack of harmony, it is born of a quandary confronting the three megalopolises.

On the one hand, they need migrants, not just young talent, but laborers as well, to keep them going. But the influx of migrants inevitably leads to social and fiscal tension, as the newcomers share a sliver of the social welfare pie. This pits them against the locals, the vested interests, who oppose any new arrangements that dilute their benefits.

Schooling row

A graphic instance is the schooling row that erupted in Shanghai last year. Due to hukou, the children of migrants cannot participate in local university and high school entrance exams. They have to travel back home to sit the grueling tests, a requirement that many perceive as unfair.

Prompted by a migrant schoolgirl's online campaign for what she called "equal rights to education," many people last year attacked Bei Shang Guang for shutting the door on migrants and reserving their prestigious schools, arguably the nation's best, disproportionately for the locals. It is a lot harder for a student from, say, Henan Province, to be admitted to Tsinghua and Peking universities, practically China's Harvard and MIT, than for his or her Beijing counterpart. While such arrangements do favor residents of Bei Shang Guang and are rigged against migrants, they are fiercely supported by the locals who refuse to yield ground to migrants.

While there is some relaxing of hukou locally, its sweeping reform is highly complicated and thus a long way off. Drastic measures to waive it will open the floodgate for mass migration, to the chagrin of city managers concerned about stability and provision of public goods.

But harmony is not the only category in which Bei Shang Guang did poorly. They also lagged behind in government openness, transparency and good governance. This was a surprising conclusion, as the country's most cosmopolitan cities, their officials are believed to be more open-minded and liberal.

The fact that Bei Shang Guang was unseated from positions of glory by a few second- and third-tier cities in the bluebook has spawned controversy. After all, the latter's need for population to fuel their growth has naturally prompted schemes to relax hukou as part of their charm offensive to woo talents. But does that more equal treatment bring "harmony"? Not necessarily.

Xinhua reported last year that after many fled Bei Shang Guang, only to find more nepotism back home, they return to the big cities where upward mobility entails greater efforts and less cronyism. The situation is reminiscent of acclaimed writer Qian Zhongshu's novel, "Wei Cheng,"("Besieged City") in which the writer famously says "people within the city want to leave it, while people from without want to get in."

For all the partiality of its criteria, in general the bluebook is a progressive development, in that it assesses the achievements of urban China from a brand new perspective, takes into account more human-interest factors like equal opportunity and interpersonal relationships, instead of the usual keywords of industrial output, GDP and growth rate.

For this reason, the bluebook merits praise.

At the same time, the bluebook is a development in keeping with the buzzword "China Dream," a brainchild of President Xi Jinping. At a recent seminar, famed British scholar Martin Jacques, the author of "When China Rules the World," interpreted "China Dream" as representing a possibility of wide horizons and a broad vision, such as a better relationship at work or balance of life for average Chinese.

When this possibility is encumbered and shattered by the rigidity of hukou, people's potential becomes trapped, a tragedy for the individual and the nation at large.

Lately media reports have zeroed in on the difficulty of fresh college graduates in landing a job. So far this year, only 44 percent of them reportedly have received offers from employers. In Bei Shang Guang, where competition is more intense, the employment headache is acute.

Inspiring hope

In a speech on May 4, a day when all of China commemorates the patriotism of youths protesting Western partitioning of Chinese sovereignty 94 years ago, President Xi said the nation must inspire hope in the youth, who in themselves embody hope for the future.

Indeed, if a large majority of the nation's young people are unemployed, the consequences are unpleasant, both for social stability and for a country on its way up in the world.

That's why the results of the bluebook are all the more worthwhile and important. More efforts are needed to dispel some young people's gloomy vision of their prospects. And this job can start with making cities like Bei Shang Guang more youth-friendly, and to a larger extent, migrant-friendly. Inclusive growth, a mandate of the new leadership, provides dynamics for the social harmony politicians crave.

Although long-running obstacles to this new growth goal won't go away overnight, and any precipitous reform of hukou will likely escalate the conflict of interests between locals and migrants, we trust our politicians, wise as they are, to provide better public services for people earning their livelihoods in urban China.

They have every right to dream about a better future, to realize their personal "China Dream," in full harmony with cities where they are treated more as residents than sojourners.