The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, visited the new “city of the future” located in the northern province of Hebei on Wednesday and urged state-owned enterprises and institutions to relocate their offices to this city, as reported by the Xinhua agency.
This city is called the Xiong’an New Area and is situated about 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing. The president traveled from the capital to the new city on a high-speed train and inspected different areas of the locality. “The development of the Xiong’an New Area is a nationally significant millennium project and must be advanced with concrete actions and sustained efforts,” said Xi. Its construction started from scratch in 2017, and the fact that it has become a modern metropolis in just six years is like a “miracle,” he stated.
The Xiong’an New Area is still under construction, but it is now entering a planning phase for the relocation of financial institutions, research institutes, and public entities. The government plans to transfer part of the non-essential governmental apparatus from Beijing to the new city and develop it to a level that can rival the Chinese metropolises of Shenzhen and Shanghai.
Xi Jinping assured that in this new city of the future, pioneering reform and opening-up policies and measures will be implemented, as well as experimental and cutting-edge innovation projects, with the purpose of turning Xiong’an into a fertile ground for innovation and entrepreneurial initiatives.