Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, greets the residents while visiting a residential community in Rongdong District of the Xiongan New Area, north China's Hebei Province, May 10, 2023. /Xinhua
Editor's note: Xin Ge is an associate professor at the School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
In an inspection tour of China's youngest city Xiongan New Area on May 10, Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, praised the six years' rapid construction of the city as a "miracle" and stressed that the focus has now shifted to high-quality construction, high-level management and high-quality development.
As an emerging "city of the future," Xiongan marks its sixth anniversary this year. On April 1, 2017, China announced its plans to build Xiongan New Area, to relieve Beijing of functions nonessential to its role as the capital on the one hand, and advance the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region on the other. Xiongan became the third new area in China with national significance after two successful precedents – Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and Shanghai Pudong New Area.
High-quality construction
Since the start, Xiongan has aimed to be a smart and efficient city according to five key indicators: safety, convenience, efficiency, green transportation and economic development. Since its establishment, Xiongan has initiated a total of 177 key projects worth 618.4 billion yuan ($89.1 billion). Now a slew of landmark infrastructure projects has been completed.
Xiongan Station is the first major infrastructure project to start construction in as early as December 2018 and opened for operations in December 2020, setting a record in terms of construction speed for stations of a similar scale. Inside the city, the general formation of the road network, waterways and ecological corridors have also swiftly taken form.
Apart from the emphasis on speed, abundant resources have been poured into the region to foster high-tech industries. 5G technologies have been widely utilized in scenarios such as 5G smart robots, self-driving cars, smart buses and smart parks. For instance, the parking lot of the Xiongan Station was built into a pilot zone of Internet of Vehicles.
An aerial photo of Xiongan New Area, north China's Hebei Province, October 31, 2022. /CFP
High-level management
As this young city grows at an unprecedented speed, modern governance techniques and skills also need to be learned and applied accordingly.
In many ways, Xiongan represents China's vision of its next stage of development. According to the grand blueprints, Xiongan is expected to become a high-level socialist modern city that is "green, intelligent, livable" and competitive by the end of 2035. In particular, Xiongan has built a City Security Lab aimed at integrating administrative services for the people.
As President Xi stressed, policies and measures over education, health care, housing and social security among others, should be fine-tuned in Xiongan, so that the residing institutions and their personnel can enjoy tangible benefits. Furthermore, to provide high-quality public services, Beijing-based universities, hospitals, and schools are building or will build branches in Xiongan.
High-quality coordinated development
Together with the eastern Tongzhou district, Xiongan New Area at the southern end of Beijing formed two "wings" of Beijing to relieve the capital's non-essential functions. The 20th National Congress of the CPC last October urged efforts to advance coordinated development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and build the Xiongan New Area to a higher standard.
The city was primarily built with the purpose of absorbing some of the businesses and population from the capital Beijing. Now the construction for coordinated development is forging ahead at full throttle: centrally-administered state-owned enterprises have set up over 140 subsidiaries and branches in the area. According to a report from Xinjing Newspaper, over 3600 registered companies from Beijing had settled in Xiongan by 2022, accounting for about 80 percent of the region's overall investment.
According to the strategic plan, by the middle of this century, Xiongan should become an integral part of the world-level Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei city cluster. It will actively absorb and gather innovative factor resources in the world and develop high-tech industries from a high starting point. In addition, Xiongan can explore the building of a digital commerce development demonstration area. With its booming digital economy, Xiongan will subsequently participate in the formulation of international trade rules and agreements for data assets, both in China and abroad.
Xiongan's planning is an apparent demonstration that China no longer just focuses on the scale of cities, but is pursuing the construction of modern cities with a Chinese vision. While the city steps into its seventh year of development, under the newest instructions from above, numerous changes are taking place every day on this land that show to the world China's unswerving push to make it its dream city.
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