Chinese county where Xi Jinping worked steps up bid to get ‘state-level’ status
Move to upgrade status of Zhengding comes after president’s plan to build a new city in the same province were revealed
A county in China’s northern Hebei province, where President Xi Jinping worked for three years in the early 1980s, is stepping up its bid to upgrade its status and become a “state-level new district”.
The move comes only a month after plans were unveiled of Xi’s ambition to make another area of Hebei, Xiongan, a new city.
Zhengding, a county under the administration of Hebei’s capital Shijiazhuang, is now going through due process to become a state district, allowing it to take over some of the “urban functions” of Beijing and Tianjin, according to a report in the Hebei Daily.
A notice on the city government website dated on April 27 said the city’s deputy party chief would take charge of moving the offices of the government, local Communist Party committee, political advisory body and the local people’s congress to Zhengding, signalling the initiative was making headway.
The mayor of Shijiangzhuang first confirmed the city was planning to formally apply to create the national new district in Zhengding in 2015. State media also reported in 2013 that the main municipal authorities in the city would move their offices to the county.
Zhengding is about 300km south of Beijing and the driving force behind its bid for higher status appears to have been the local authorities, while the decision to create a new city at Xiongan came directly from Xi himself.