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City Guide · Honest Height Rankings · China (country median vanity: 4.0%)
In Honest 100
1
Rank pending
0
Tallest (honest)
522m
Best ratio
1.1%
Beijing's Honest 100 representation is led by CITIC Tower (China Zun), the current nominee for the Honest Horizon award with a 1.1% Vanity Ratio - the lowest confirmed Vanity Ratio in the database. At 522 metres of occupied floor out of 527.7 metres total, the CITIC Tower leaves only 5.7 metres between where the elevator stops and the building's architectural top. Beijing's strict height restrictions in the historic city centre have pushed supertall development to the CBD periphery, where efficiency was a design constraint.
Buildings ranked by Honest Height - the elevation of the highest occupied floor. Not architectural top. Not spires. Not decorative steel nobody rides an elevator to. The gap between the two is the Vanity Ratio. See the full methodology.
Buildings in Beijing, drawn to scale
Each silhouette drawn to scale. Silver = the height humans actually reach. Amber = the decorative steel above it.
Top 1 in Beijing · Confirmed occupied height
The standard global ranking uses architectural top - the highest structural element regardless of whether anyone reaches it. The Honest Height ranking uses the highest occupied floor. For Beijing, the delta between the two metrics is tracked as the Vanity Ratio for each building.
Tallest by honest height: CITIC Tower (China Zun) - 522m occupied
Tallest by architectural top: CITIC Tower (China Zun) - 527.7m
See: The full Honest 100 · Methodology
CITIC Tower has a 1.1% Vanity Ratio. That means 522 of its 527.7 metres are occupied. It is the tallest building in Beijing, built directly adjacent to the city's CBD axis. It is the current Honest Horizon nominee. Beijing did not need to add a decorative crown. The building ends where the last floor ends.