Changzhi campaigned for the title and won the honor. During the award presentation ceremony, the following comments were given to Changzhi: "Today, the city is covered with green and it's full of vigor, and things are looking up."

From the comments, it seemed that environmental rescue efforts had played a role in transforming the previously black-listed place into an award winning city. However, Li Xiaodong of Changzhi Municipal Environmental Protection Administration tells the EO that the competition weighed cultural and historical elements more, with little consideration given to economic and environmental issues.

Thus, his administration viewed the title won as a publicity stunt facilitated by CCTV, as there was no clear criterion stated for assessing the competition's entries.

Brand Name Reengineering Projects
The award marked the beginning of a series of "brand-name engineering" projects launched by the Changzhi local government, which subsequently picked up more awards and began a yearly quest for different titles.

In January of 2006, the city was crowned "National Garden City" by the Ministry of Construction. The award assessment record reads, "44.8 percent of the city is covered by green vegetation, 35 percent higher than the required percentage."

Six months later, Changzhi won the "National Sanitary City" title. The award's assessment criterion was said to be quite strict, covering seven major items and 54 minor ones.

"We can't say the city completely meets all the requirements. For example, according to the water quality standards established by the government, the water quality in ‘sanitary cities' was supposed to be category three, but water quality in Changzhi's reservoir actually fell under category four [which is worse], except when there's adequate rainfall in spring and summer. The city narrowly got the approval rate because the assessment was done in late summer," Sun explains.

Emboldened by these previous successes, the latest ambition of Changzhi is to campaign for "Most Suitable City for Living". But when the EO asked local government officials about the issue, they all claimed to be unsure of the selection criteria, and unsure of who was organizing the competition.