Can China’s President Xi Jinping realise his ‘perfect’ city dream?
Xi wants to emulate Shenzhen and Pudong in Shanghai, but times have changed and transforming an economic backwater will be difficult
China’s decision to develop a new economic zone in a Hebei backwater is a great thing for the nation and “a big strategy for a thousand years”, according to President Xi Jinping.
It was a bold declaration for a Chinese leader who has not yet finished his first five-year term and who leads a Communist Party that has existed for less than 100 years.
Xi wants to build a “perfect” place in Xiongan, according to the vision presented by the official Xinhua news agency. The Xiongan New Area would be environmentally friendly and a good place to live, it said. Its economy would be supported by innovation, and it would have top-notch public services.
The president said Xiongan would at least have the same meaning for the country as Shenzhen in the 1980s and Shanghai Pudong in the 1990s. Xinhua said the area was picked as the site for the city of future because it was “a piece of white paper” and “the most beautiful picture can be painted upon it”.
“Xi is a strongman who wants to undermine vested interest groups which have established roots in Beijing for generations,” said Mei Xinyu, a researcher affiliated with China’s Ministry of Commerce. “Starting from a new place could reduce their influence, while Xiongan would become Xi’s legacy.”
According to a long Xinhua article detailing the decision-making process behind the Xiongan plan, Xi thought Beijing had succumbed to the “the illness of a big metropolis”, namely stretched public services, jammed roads and air pollution. The right cure, the article cited Xi as saying, was to “downsize” Beijing by kicking out merchants, migrant workers and factories and moving schools, hospitals and institutions somewhere else.
Xiongan – encompassing the counties of Xiong, Rongcheng and Anxin – is a key piece of that puzzle.