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Zhou Xin

For centuries, the Beijing mayor’s official residence has been near a walled compound near the Forbidden City. But soon that will all change.
The Beijing municipal government, the city’s Communist Party committee, and its parliamentary and political advisory bodies, would all be moved 30km east of Tiananmen Square by 2017, the city’s vice-mayor Li Shixiang said on Thursday.
The relocation is part of a plan to make the city, the Chinese capital since the days of Marco Polo, less crowded and smoggy.

As the political heart of the country, Beijing is also home to China’s top universities, best hospitals, biggest banks and largest state companies. Its population has ballooned beyond 20 million, similar to that of Australia, resulting in persistent traffic jams and pollution.
“The central government is trying to make Beijing less bloated,” said Lu Bin, an urban planning professor at Peking University. “The [municipal] government is taking a lead in moving.”
The city has undergone many rounds of urban landscape changes since 1949.
An ancient wall that surrounded the city was largely demolished in the 1950s and 1960s under Chairman Mao Zedong, and many centuries-old communities have been lost to property development. The city has sprawled in almost every direction, taking over formerly rural lands.

In February 2014, President Xi Jinping said businesses and facilities not essential to a capital city should relocate. Since then, schools, hospitals and shops have been told to move to the suburbs and polluting factories and wholesale markets to neighbouring Hebei.
The municipal government’s address is currently within walking distance of the Zhongnanhai compound – the residence of the nation’s top leaders.
Its new address is in Tongzhou district, a rural outback until quite recently.
Demolition of the district’s villages was completed last month to make way for Beijing’s “second administration centre”.
The district was a bloody battlefield in 1860 when thousands of Manchurian horse warriors were slaughtered by an Anglo-French invading force.
But for Li, the vice-mayor, the new office address is poetic.
“The moon hangs over the Eight-Mile Bridge with ships sailing in the Great Canal; by the shadow of a pagoda, at the place known as Tongzhou,” Li cited a poem as saying.
In a separate development, the municipal government published draft rules on residency, stipulating that Chinese citizens must pay social security for seven years before they can apply for household registration, or hukou. Anyone with a criminal record, or who has violated family planning policies, will not qualify. The city hopes to cap its population at 23 million and reduce its downtown population 15 per cent by 2020.



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After nearly nine centuries, Beijing’s mayoral office to move outside the heart of the capital in bid to cut pollution

People visit the Forbidden City on a sunny day December 2, 2015, after a fresh cold front cleared the smog that was blanketing Beijing, China. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

A Chinese man looks at the main gate of Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound, in central Beijing, January 12, 2004. The Chinese Communist Party will launch its first "Party Supervisor Regulation" during a meeting of the Central Discipline Inspection Commission which starts in middle of January. The Commission is the Party's corruption watchdog. The regulation will pave the way for inspection of China's top leaders in the central government and provinces, the semi-official China News Service reported. REUTERS/Guang Niu

*** ONE TIME USE ONLY *** A woman stretches herself in snow in a park in Tongzhou district, Beijing, on Feb. 20, during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday. Due to the snow fall, less people went to the park for the holiday 'temple fair', a traditional function that local people celebrate their Spring Festival holiday. (Imaginechina) 2015?2?20??????????????????????????????????????????

A view of the Forbidden City and environs in the centre of Beijing. The city government’s office will relocate from city centre to Tongzhou, 30km away, by 2017. Photo: Reuters

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After nearly nine centuries, Beijing’s mayoral office to move outside the heart of the capital in bid to cut pollution

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