Shanghai and Beijing led the list of the Chinese mainland in this year's English Proficiency Index released by English training institution, Education First (EF).
Hong Kong ranked first among all of China's regions in the report.
The report is the 12th edition of its kind, based on data from more than 2.1 million test takers who are non-native English speakers, among 111 countries and regions in the world. The testers took an online English test, which was initiated by EF.
Among all the non-English-native countries, the Netherlands ranked first, followed by Singapore, Austria, Norway and Denmark.
Europe is the best in the world in English proficiency.
Hong Kong is the region with the highest score at 561 in China, a 16-point increase from last report's 545.
Beijing and Shanghai both scored 549, ranking top among all the cities on the Chinese mainland, followed by Tianjin and Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province.
