Yang Lei, a manager at an engineering design company in Beijing, chose to be transferred to her company’s newly established branch in Xiongan New Area in Hebei Province in 2018.
It was challenging to leave her comfort zone but she didn’t want to miss out on opportunities working in the new area would present.
“When I first came here, the area was a little desolate, without many restaurants or entertainment venues. However, now, supermarkets, restaurants and bars that are open 24 hours are everywhere,” she told The Beijing Times.
In the first few years after she began working in the area, Yang commuted between her home in Beijing and Xiongan by car every day, with the round trip taking three hours. Today, she rents a newly built apartment in Xiongan, which is inexpensive and similar in quality to high-end residential compounds in Beijing.
With the construction of public facilities such as hospitals and schools, an increasing number of professionals like Yang have made Xiongan their homes.
Strategic planning
On April 1, 2017, China’s central authorities announced a plan to establish Xiongan New Area—an area approximately 100 km southwest of Beijing, spanning Rongcheng, Anxin, and Xiongxian counties—and some adjacent areas. According to the plan, Xiongan will cover around 100 square km initially and expand to cover 200 square km in the mid-term and about 2,000 square km in the long term, with a population of 2 to 2.5 million.
Built to relieve Beijing of functions nonessential to its role as the national capital, it will be home to administrative and public institutions, corporate headquarters, financial institutions, universities and research institutes relocated from Beijing.
For a long time, there has been a large gap in development between Beijing and Tianjin and neighboring Hebei Province. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012, China has been promoting the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which was elevated to a national strategy in 2014.
The building of Xiongan New Area is a key step in implementing this strategy and relieving Beijing’s non-capital functions to help remedy its big city maladies such as traffic congestion and air pollution.
“This is another new area of national significance after the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and Shanghai Pudong New Area,” read a circular issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on April 1, 2017.
The move is a “major historic and strategic choice on the part of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core,” the circular continued, describing the decision as “a strategy crucial for the millennium to come.”
President Xi, also General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, has planned for, made decisions on and promoted the Xiongan New Area in person.
During an inspection tour to Hebei on February 23, 2017, President Xi called for “global vision, international standards, Chinese characteristics and high targets in the area’s planning and construction.”
He called for efforts to turn Xiongan into “a demonstration zone for innovative development.”
The area should prioritize ecological protection and improve people’s wellbeing, as well as protect and carry forward Chinese traditional culture, he said.
Xi visited Xiongan again in January 2019. During a visit to the exhibition center for the planning of the new area, he emphasized that the creation of Xiongan is “a strategy that will have lasting importance for the millennium to come.”
China should remain committed to the new development concept and stick to high-quality growth when building the area, Xi said.
While visiting a government service center, Xi emphasized that development of the Xiongan New Area requires concerted efforts from a large number of enterprises.
“We welcome all companies whether they are state-owned enterprises or private companies, local firms or companies from Beijing, Chinese enterprises or foreign-funded
companies, as long as they conform to the industrial development plan of the new area,” he said.
In June 2017, the Xiongan New Area Management Committee was established to take charge of government affairs for the new area. In July 2017, state-owned China Xiongan Construction and Investment Group was established to raise capital and undertake construction projects for subsidized housing, commercial real estate, transportation and energy infrastructure, as well as municipal utilities.
In April 2018, a master plan for Xiongan New Area was approved by the central authorities. The blueprint is the fundamental guideline on the planning and development of the new area, mapping out its future up to 2035 and looking into the mid-21st century. According to the plan, by 2035, Xiongan will have developed into a modern city that is green, intelligent and livable, with strong competitiveness and harmonious human-environment interaction.
Under the guiding blueprint, by mid-century, Xiongan will become a significant part of the world-class Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei city cluster,
effectively performing Beijing’s non-capital functions and providing the Chinese solution to the country’s big city malaise. -The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News Exchange Item
