East Asia & Pacific » China » Beijing Hebei Tianjin
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Beijing-Hebei-Tianjin Megapolitan Metro-Matrix |
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| The 216,000 square kilometre region surrounding the capital is home to more than 100 million people and has a combined gross domestic product of more than 6 trillion yuan (HK$7.6 trillion), making it the country's third main economic engine after the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta.
Urbanisation of the Jing-Jin-Ji region has been a goal since the 1980s, but conflicting interests have stalled progress. Just why Xi is pushing the plan now is the subject of much analysis and conjecture. The first reason put forward by analysts is that the new leadership had to find a solution to the "urban diseases" afflicting Beijing and Tianjin - hellish traffic jams and chronic air pollution arising from their rapid population growth. The metropolises, two of the country's four most important cities directly under central government control, realised they could not tackle these problems without the cooperation of Hebei. Another reason is that the central government is trying to restructure the economy away from its decades-old growth model that is heavily dependent on capital investment and export-oriented manufacturing. That model is increasingly unstable, and the economy is in desperate need of new momentum. Finally, it is also possible that it is a tactic to end the inefficiency of neighboring localities as they compete for similar businesses. (Additional reporting by Victoria Ruan) Metro-Matrix provides the answer |
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