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Beijing Mayor’s Report Highlights “Scientific Concept of Development”

Achieving sustainable development and improving the lives of Beijing’s 15 million residents were highlighted on January 23, 2005 in Mayor Wang Qishan’s work report to the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress.

In official terminology, the “scientific concept of development” was a key point in mayor’s 2005 report. The concept was advanced at the Third Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in September 2004 and calls for an end to the excessive and unhealthy pursuit of economic growth. It obliges governments at all levels to pursue balanced economic growth, while ensuring environmental protection and ecological conservation. It calls for the development of natural and human resources in a way that will eventually result in the creation of a “harmonious society of socialism” in the country.

For the Chinese capital, Wang’s emphasis on scientific development comes as officials and the people are busy making preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games. Wang said Beijing’s development “must fall in line” with the city’s Olympic motto, “Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics and People’s Olympics.” He said the motto incorporates the city’s pursuit of sustainable development.

Construction is under way on all Olympic venues, including the National Conference Centre and the Olympic Village. According to the plan, the ongoing building of four urban railroads, one freeway and two urban expressways will be accelerated. A range of environmental programmes will begin during 2005. About 2,000 coal-fuelled boilers will be converted to use natural or liquefied gas. A total of 3,800 old, polluting buses will be reduced to scrap, and 20,000 taxis now in use will be replaced with vehicles that meet stringent European standards for exhaust emissions. The air quality of Beijing should achieve “good” or “fair” ratings for at least 63 percent of the days during the year, up from about 62.5 percent in 2004. When it bid for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing pledged to do its best to ensure that by 2008 “days bright with blue skies” would account for at least 70 percent of the days of a year.

Under the rubric of scientific development, Wang said Beijing will “spare no effort” to make the local economy “resources-recycling-based.” The use of land for construction will be subject to strict controls. Water conservation will also be tightened. A market-oriented water-pricing mechanism will be used to discourage the waste of water; the industrial consumption of water used to generate 10,000 yuan in output value will be reduced by 9 percent. Seventy kilometres of pipelines will be laid to improve the recycling of industrial wastes and domestic sewage, and the Municipal Government expects to recycle 30 percent of the city’s wastewater for use in watering lawns and plants and for washing streets and toilets.

“No time will be lost in the formulation of complete sets of standards for the use of land, the consumption of water and energy by industrial projects, in developing environmental standards, or standards for the number of jobs each project should create.”

Wang vowed to improve the government’s management of coal supply and demand, electricity, gas and transport capacities and to increase the government’s reserves of food and cooking oil to ensure a “stable local market.”
According to the report, the Chinese capital will develop ways to assess the economic performance of enterprises and their environmental effects. Enterprises that fail to meet resource-consumption standards and that cause heavy pollution will be closed “step by step.”

The city will continue to assign top priority to the development of the service sector. “Now that foreign banks in Beijing are allowed to engage in transactions in the Chinese currency, the renminbi, we must seize this opportunity to accelerate the development of the Beijing Central Business District (CBD) and Financial Street to attract more investors from China and the world.”

He said the city will continue to improve the city’s investment environment in 2005. “Companies of the non-public sector will be encouraged to get involved in the regrouping and reorganization of State-owned enterprises. Our policy allows private investment in any field where it is not specifically forbidden, under the law, particularly in infrastructure and public-utility development.”

He said that by the end of 2005, half of the State-owned enterprises under the jurisdiction of the Beijing Municipal Government will have been transformed into stockholding entities that allow the use of private capital.
In striving to improve the city’s investment environment, the mayor said, “The task of paramount importance will be to change the administrative functions of the government.”

He promised to improve the rules and standards for investment in each area, and to make the handling of administrative affairs more transparent.

“The legal background for matters of administrative licensing, the conditions, procedures and deadlines for acquiring administrative licensing and the rights and obligations of the applicants, all these will be made known to the general public. We will also speed up the development of e-administration for higher efficiency.”

The mayor pledged to improve the government planning for the development of tourism in suburban Beijing and to support privately owned enterprises there in their development. This will be a part of a government effort to help rural residents increase their incomes and improve their living standards. He said the government will complete the building of water projects sufficient to ensure a supply of potable water for 300,000 people in rural Beijing. The Municipal Government will increase its investment in rural industrialization and urbanization, while encouraging non-government investors to invest in infrastructural development in rural areas.

The work report stressed the importance of the principle of “placing the interests of the people above everything,” and said the “ultimate objective” of the government would be to follow a “scientific concept of development.”

In 2004, disposal incomes of Beijing’s urban residents averaged 15,638 yuan per capita. The net income of the rural population averaged to 7,172 yuan per capita, increases of 11.5 percent and 9.2 percent in real terms over 2003. Incomes of both urban and rural residents are expected to increase by 6 percent during 2005, according to the report. Wang said the Municipal Government will create 170,000 jobs in 2005 and limit the unemployment rate to 2.3 percent, well below the average for the nation, which is about 4 percent.

He said an ongoing government employment programme will help 1,000 unemployed people start their own businesses, which will generate 10,000 jobs.