Seeking more space and fewer people, Beijing’s downtown districts set sights on lower-class residents

Beijing plans to cut the number of people living in its downtown core by more than 100,000 as part of a wider effort to ease urban density, a push seen as disproportionately affecting migrant workers and lower class residents.

The capital’s population has risen by two million since 2010, reaching 21.7 million people last year, which has put strain on roads, public transport, hospitals and education. Keeping a lid on that growth has become a top concern for the city’s policymakers, and officials want no more than 23 million living in Beijing by 2020.

Much of the increase in recent years has been in Beijing’s six downtown districts, and new steps are being taken to reverse that growth and turn the city core into a national capital along the lines of Washington.

As part of that shift, the district government in Dongcheng, home to the Forbidden City, would reduce its number of permanent residents by 115,000, to 762,000 by 2020, The Beijing News reported on Wednesday.