Domestic happiness index

We have heard plenty about improving the public's sense of well-being from local people's congresses and people's political consultative conferences. There have even been proposals in Guangdong and Shanghai to substitute a happiness index for gross domestic product as a yardstick for local development.

Such an index may or may not be written in local development programs in the end, but that the matter has been singled out and to some extent dictated policy discourse, does inspire optimistic expectations about the way we live. At the very least, we are hopefully waking up to the simple fact that swelling GDP alone does not deliver satisfaction. There is nothing worse than governments unaware of, or simply ignoring, the way people feel.

Therefore, no matter how they define and phrase it, we applaud all efforts conducive to the public's well-being.