Hangzhou, capital city of East China's Zhejiang province, has been listed among China's happiest 10 cities in 2010 on Sunday night.

The annual happiest cities list complied by Xinhua News Agency affiliate Oriental Outlook developed criteria based on people's feeling of happiness rather than economic achievements.

The 12 criteria include interpersonal intimacy, job opportunities, educational quality, security, traffic, medical professionalism, housing prices, natural environments, economic development, culture and entertainment, and civility.

This year's assessment was based on 24,000 valid questionnaires, 1.78 million respondents' replies to newspaper polls and an additional 45 million polled online from September until November, the list's organizing committee said.

The 10 cities that made the list are Chongqing, Chengdu and Kunming in Southwest China; Hangzhou, Nanjing and Wuxi in East China; Changsha in Central China; Guangzhou in South China; and Changchun and Tonghua in Northeast China.

Chongqing, Wuxi, Guangzhou and Tonghua replaced last year's listings of Ningbo, Xi'an, Yinchuan and Nanchang.

Guangzhou's inclusion stems from its efforts to improve the city's "name card", the organizing committee said, while Tonghua ranked highest in interpersonal intimacy.

Ten counties were also named the happiest out of 60 candidates nationwide.

By Xie Fang