Beijing subcenter carves out new career path

District host to a growing number of govt departments, State-owned and private firms

The construction of Beijing's subcenter in Tongzhou district has been hailed by local officials as a milestone event and serves as an opportunity to advance the high-quality development of the Chinese capital in the new era.

A series of major projects in the subcenter are moving ahead and three landmark buildings — Beijing Performing Arts Center, Beijing Library and Beijing Grand Canal Museum — have finished construction and were opened to the public in late December.

They are situated in the northwestern part of the grand Central Green Forest Park and adjacent to the Grand Canal. The total construction area of the three projects is approximately 300,000 square meters.

"These projects can greatly enhance the vitality and cultural charm of Tongzhou and meet the needs of people in the district's surrounding areas and eastern part of Beijing for a high-quality cultural life," said Hu Jiulong, deputy director of the city's subcenter management committee.

Since 2016, when the subcenter construction was proposed, Tongzhou has been taking the relocation of non-capital functions of Beijing as its main task.

From December 2023, the second batch of Beijing municipal government departments have been moving into the subcenter. Along with them, companies, including subsidiaries of State-owned enterprises and a number of key private and foreign companies, have relocated their headquarters to Tongzhou.

Li Changli, chairman of Beijing Investment Group, said the company has enjoyed more space for development since moving to the subcenter in 2019.

"Over the past five years, we have attracted about 100,000 people in the upstream and downstream industry chain, like design and construction, to work here and our operational scale has increased by nearly 10 times," Li noted.

Moreover, the subcenter has added 134 newly registered innovative small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as 102 municipal and national specialized and sophisticated SMEs with novel products, including six "little giant" companies.

"Little giant" companies are small enterprises that are still in the early stage of development and focus on the new generations of information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing, new energy, new materials, biomedicine and other high-end fields.

Over seven years of development, the subcenter has now formed six industrial clusters including the digital economy, modern finance and advanced manufacturing.

Meanwhile, sound public support facilities and services, covering such sectors as green areas, education and medical care, have rapidly increased coverage in the subcenter, building it into a livable place with a better quality of life.

In the core area of the subcenter, for example, what was once a chemical factory has been transformed into a forest park, covering an area equivalent to the size of nearly four Summer Palaces. The subcenter has also added nearly 9,333 hectares of forest and built greenways totaling about 370 kilometers north to south during the past seven years.

Also, it has gathered more than 20 schools like Beijing School, Jingshan School and Huangchenggen Primary School, and seven hospitals like Friendship Hospital, Anzhen Hospital and Peking University People's Hospital.

Accelerating its integration into the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the subcenter is constructing a comprehensive transportation hub as a major approach to achieving this goal.

Inaugurated in 2019, the hub is expected to complete the construction of its main structure by the end of this year and begin operation in 2025.

When finished, it will integrate intercity railways, urban rail transit, suburban railways and bus routes. It will become the only transportation hub in Beijing to connect the city's two major international airports and be the largest of its kind in Asia, local officials said.

Forecasts say it will take 15 minutes to reach the city's downtown areas and Beijing Capital International Airport; 35 minutes to reach the Beijing Daxing International Airport and Tangshan city in Hebei province, and one hour to Hebei's Xiong'an New Area.

Meng Jingwei, Party secretary of Tongzhou, said the district will focus on its relationship with Xiong'an New Area, downtown Beijing, Langfang and other surrounding areas of Hebei in the future to promote Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional development.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn