Beijing refining blueprint for megacity development

Pivotal national initiative bolsters collaboration with Tianjin and Hebei

Beijing has achieved breakthrough progress in reallocating non-capital functions over the past decade, including the relocation of State-owned enterprises and optimization of its public service resources, according to a senior official.

"We pay more attention to making improvements during relocation, not simply to move to another place," Guo Lanfeng, a senior official with the National Development and Reform Commission, said in a news conference on coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

Guo said State-owned enterprises should upgrade their management mechanism, expand business scope and further boost sci-tech innovation after being relocated so as to promote the development of Tianjin and Hebei, and that a primary aim of cross-regional coordinated development is "to solve the big city diseases of the national capital that have resulted from its rapid growth through deep reform."

Since 2014, Beijing has been implementing a new urban development plan to reduce its permanent population and areas under construction. As a result, it has become the first megacity in China to achieve sustainable development that pursues growth while consuming fewer resources, Guo noted.

Official statistics show the current permanent population in the city's six major districts has declined by 15 percent since 2014, and by strictly controlling construction in urban and rural areas, its built-up area has been reduced by 130 square kilometers over the past 10 years.

Beijing's GDP passed the 3 trillion-yuan ($417.3 billion) mark in 2018 and eclipsed 4 trillion yuan in 2021. It has also led the country's provincial-level areas in many indicators, such as labor productivity and energy and water consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP.

The city attaches great importance to developing advanced, sophisticated industries and the digital economy, and to determining the layout of future industries in advance. As a result, it has nurtured two trillion-yuan-level industrial clusters of new-generation information technology and sci-tech services, along with several 100-billion-yuan-level industrial clusters.

Moreover, Beijing has annually upgraded its measures to reform the business environment, striving to create a market-oriented, law-based, convenient and international atmosphere of entrepreneurship. Last year, the number of newly registered market entities in the city increased by 20.3 percent, attaining a record high in excess of 2.11 million.

As one of Beijing's two new wings, Xiong'an New Area in Hebei, along with the Beijing Municipal Administrative Center, has entered a new development stage of carrying out large-scale construction while undertaking the relocation of noncapital functions. Guo said the new area has finished building a backbone road network, and over the next decade Xiong'an will mainly focus on the establishment and improvement of its systems and mechanisms while some major infrastructure projects will continue to be accelerated.

According to the news release, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has implemented coordinated development in an all-around way, and plans to build itself into a power source serving the country's high-quality growth. For example, Tianjin has strengthened interaction with Beijing in resource sharing and cooperation in sci-tech innovation and industries, and the city now has more than 120 companies providing parts for Beijing Benz Automotive, Li Auto and Xiaomi EV.

Liu Guiping, vice-mayor of Tianjin, said the city will continue to expand the scope and depth of its cooperation with Beijing, covering such sectors as industrial parks, key projects, business environment, infrastructure, public services, social governance and ecological and environmental protection.

Data from the Beijing Bureau of Statistics show the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region generated 10.4 trillion yuan in GDP in 2023, 1.9 times that of 2013.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn