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Programme Highlights "Scientific Outlook" in Beijing's Development

The Beijing Municipal People's Congress on January 20 approved a new programme emphasizing a "scientific outlook on development" that will guide the capital city's socio-economic development from 2006 to 2010.

Under China's standing rules, the Beijing Municipal People's Congress (BMPC), in effect, the capital city's city council, meets at the beginning of every year, prior to the annual, early March session of the National People's Congress, China's highest legislature, to examine and approve city development plans for the year.

But this year's Fourth Session of the Twelfth BMPC was different from other sessions, in that it approved a "programme," not a "plan," for the city's 2006–10 development. This wording is significant, because in China's official terminology, a plan (jihua, 计划) means something mandatory, something imposed from above that must be done. A programme (guihua, 规划), however, is much more flexible and may be adapted to suit changing circumstances. The use of guihua to replace jihua is understood as representing a thorough breakaway from a Soviet-style planned economy as the country becomes increasingly market-oriented.

The scientific outlook on development was a keynote in the Outline of the Eleventh Five-Year Blueprint for Economic and Social Development in Beijing, which was submitted in a speech by Mayor Wang Qishan to a BMPC session on January 15. A programme based on the blueprint presented by Wang was approved by the BMPC on January 20. The guidelines set in the programme call for "fully implementing the scientific outlook on development" and for "following a scientific path of development that will yield economic development, prosperity and a sound ecological environment."

Broadly speaking, the phrase "scientific outlook on development," in China's official terminology, means a balance between economic growth and social progress and environmental sustainability and the availability of resources. It calls for a break from the old practice of trying to achieve high economic growth at the expense of the environment and resource conservation. In an editorial celebrating the adoption of the programme by the BMPC on January 20, the Beijing Daily, an organ of the Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, noted that in following this scientific concept, Beijing should "persistently adhere to the principle of combining economic development with political, cultural and social progress, to achieve faster and better results in implementing its development schemes."

Conservation-minded Society

The programme followed what Mayor Wang called a "successful implementation" of the city's Tenth Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development 2001–2005 (or Tenth Five-Year Plan). In his report on the blueprint, the mayor used figures to highlight the city's achievements during under the 2001–05 plan. In example, during the plan, Beijing's gross domestic product (GDP) rose by an average of 11.8 percent, nearly two percentage points greater than the growth rate for the entire country. In 2005, Beijing's per capita GDP exceeded US$5,000, while the figure was about US$1,700 per capita for the nation. On a per capita basis, disposable incomes for urban Beijing residents grew by an annual average of 10.4 percent in real terms, to 17,650 yuan (about US$2,260) in 2005. The average net income of a rural Beijing resident was 7,850 yuan (about US$980) in 2005, contributing to an annual average increase of 9.8 percent during the five-year period.

Figures such as these indicate, among other things, that Beijing has become the second most prosperous city in China, trailing Shanghai. But observers noted other important points in the mayor's report, including the fact that the city's consumption of energy and water was taken into full account when its GDP was computed. The mayor reported that during the 2001–05 period, "the amount of energy consumed for yielding every 10,000 yuan in GDP dropped by 5.5 percent (from the 1996–2000 period), and water consumption decreased by 13 percent." At the end of the BMPC session, the Beijing Municipal Government announced that, beginning in 2006, statistics will be published every quarter showing how much energy and water were used to generate every 10,000 yuan in GDP.

The new practice is meant to promote the building of a conservation-minded society—a vital part of the scientific outlook on development—in the Chinese capital. It is widely recognized that China, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, is facing an increasingly grave shortage of energy and water resources, and Beijing is no exception. For weeks in spring 2005, municipal authorities cut the supply of natural gas leading to the Yanshan Petrochemical Works, one of the largest State-owned enterprises in Beijing, to ensure that families across the city would have enough fuel for cooking and heating. The Chinese capital is also one of the thirstiest cities in China, yet, on a per capita basis, water resources available to Beijing are one-fourth of that available nationwide. Construction is in full swing on a mammoth project to divert water from the Yangtze River, 2,000 kilometres to the south, to bolster the city's water supply, and Beijing will be entitled to an extra 1 billion cubic metres of water per year after completion of the project in 2010. "When divided by the local population," the Beijing Youth Daily lamented in an article on Beijing's water crisis, "that will be no more than 100 cubic metres for each Beijing resident, or just a few cubic metres per person per month, far from enough to end the city's water shortage once and for all."

The programme pledges to reduce the consumption of energy and water for every 10,000 yuan of GDP by a further 15 percent–20 percent from current levels during 2006–10. It also calls for "energetically developing a recycling economy." According to the mayor's report, Beijing will serve as a "trial city" as China searches for ways to improve its recycling economy. As such, "Beijing is required to reduce its consumption of resources and to use them more efficiently." To build a recycling economy, the report continued, work will be done to "develop recycling production, to encourage green consumption, and to make (technological) breakthroughs in conservation and in the multipurpose utilization of resources."

Pattern of Economic Growth

Beijing's economic growth will slow a bit during the 2006–10 period to about 9 percent per year, given that the municipality will increase its investment in environmental and conservation projects. Growth in people's incomes is also expected to slow under the programme, but to not less than 6 percent in real terms for both urban and rural residents. The programme expects the city's per capita GDP to double between 2000 and 2010, but it gives no specific figures. According to news reports published by the Xinhua News Agency, the city's GDP averaged US$3,060 per capita in 2001. If all goes well, the figure should exceed US$6,000 in 2008 and US$8,000 in 2010, meaning that within five years Beijing will achieve an economic prosperity comparable to that of an average developed country, though it will still trail the most-developed countries.

Again, the programme obliges municipal authorities to follow the "scientific outlook" in striving for economic growth. "We must accelerate economic restructuring and the transformation of the pattern of economic growth and promote industrial optimization and upgrading," the programme asserts, setting the following tasks:

· Accelerating the development of a modern service industry. The ''third industry," a collective reference for "modern service industries," furnished 67.7 percent of Beijing's GDP in 2001–05. The figure should grow to 72 percent by 2010.  

· Vigorously developing industries using high and new technologies. According to the programme, the city will concentrate on developing software, IT and biological industries. It will work harder to foster the development of high-tech products with market potential, including digital TV, auto electronics, new materials and new energy sources.

· Modern manufacturing industries will also be developed. The programme obliges municipal authorities to concentrate on developing new and name-brand automobiles and petrochemical and pharmaceutical products.

· The programme also calls for modern urban agricultural development that incorporates ecological conservation while supplying the city with high quality, pollution-free products. Modern urban agriculture is expected to be "highly efficient and environmentally friendly," offering sightseeing and recreational services as well.

To fulfil these tasks, the programme indicates the city will concentrate on developing six high-tech industrial zones, including the Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park. Known as "China's Silicon Valley," the zone is also known for its high concentration of high-tech companies and research institutions. Also receiving priority in development are Beijing Financial Street and the city's Central Business District (CBD), on which the city pins its hopes of developing international financial and business centres.

While encouraging high-tech, highly efficient and environmentally friendly industries, the city will intensify its effort to phase out enterprises that use obsolete technologies, cause serious pollution or that waste energy, water or other resources. The programme singles out the Shougang Group (the Capital Iron and Steel Group) to highlight the determination of the city to "rationalize'' the distribution of the local industries.

Lying about 20 kilometres west of Tian'anmen Square, Shougang, an iron and steel works that used to produce about eight million tons of products a year, is the city's greatest air polluter. In accordance with a decision of the State Council, China's highest governing body, Shougang is being moved out of the city, to Caofeidian in Tangshan City, Hebei Province, about 250 kilometres north of Beijing. The entire project, including the building of a new, environmentally friendly Shougang, is to be completed in 2010. But, before 2008, the company's production facilities will all be dismantled and shipped out of Beijing. According to local media, the total cost of the move will be at least 50 billion yuan (US$6.2 billion). This does not include the cost of creating new jobs for about 80,000 Shougang workers, who are expected to be left idle, even as the city loses a major source of its revenue. From 1979 to 2003, Shougang paid the municipal government 35.8 billion yuan in taxes.

Olympic Facelift 

Also to be moved out of the city or closed down are chemical works in suburban areas southeast of Tian'anmen Square. One of these is the Beijing Coking Chemical Factory, the city's second greatest air polluter, which burns three million tons of coal a year and is to be closed before 2008.

The restructuring the city's industrial establishment—with an emphasis on encouraging high-tech industries and phasing out of enterprises such as Shougang and the Beijing Coking Factory—is a major aspect of Beijing's preparations for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. In his report to the BMPC session, Mayor Wang cited Beijing's winning of the rights to host the 2008 Games a major achievement of the Tenth Five-Year Plan period. "We must go all-out to make the Games a complete success," he told the BMPC deputies.

According to the programme, before 2008, 1,445 public toilets will be rebuilt and fitted with modern conveniences and 100 streets will be renovated and greened to become "garden-like." The programme also obliges the municipal government to ensure that the city's air quality rates meets "good" or "fair" standards for at least 65 percent of the days in 2008, an improvement over 62 percent reported in 2005. What merits even greater attention, however, is that the programme calls for renovating 80 "villages within the city," or chengzhongcun, a term used only in the Chinese capital that refers to slum areas in Downtown Beijing.

Taking a stroll along Chang'an Avenue, the city's main east-west thoroughfare, or along a street in the Beijing CBD, a stranger may mistake Beijing as the capital city of a developed country, with its ultra-modern office buildings, hotels, shopping malls and restaurants. But venture not too far beyond the glistening facades, and, more often than not, people encounter an entirely different picture. A striking example is Dashila, Beijing's oldest shopping street that faces the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the main gate of the Forbidden City, across Tian'anmen Square. According to an investigative report published by the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences in May 2005, this 1.6-square-kilometre area in the heart of Beijing is home to 57,551 people registered as "permanent residents" in Beijing, plus 16,700 migrant workers from rural villages in Henan, Sichuan, Guizhou and other underdeveloped provinces. "Behind those centuries-old shops and restaurants that have made the area known as Beijing's 'cultural street,' " the report says, "there is a web of narrow, dirty lanes, where people have to stand in long queues for their turn to use a public toilets in the morning. More than 90 percent of the housing structures—in fact, one-story rooms or shacks—are threatening to collapse. There are no sewers in two of these lanes. None of the 200 families in Tan'er Lane have indoor washrooms. People there have to go to a communal bathhouse and pay 10 yuan for a shower."

Harmonious Society

While definitely intended to improve the city's international image, the massive facelift is linked to the building of a "harmonious society under socialism" in the Chinese capital. In his report to the BMPC session, Mayor Wang pledged to make the city "people-friendly," a "congenial to live and work in" and "one of the most harmonious cities” in China. "Over the next five years, we must follow the strategy of enabling the Olympic Games to give a fresh boost to our efforts to improve our management of the city."

For the same purpose, the programme promises an improvement in medical and health services, education, sports and other cultural undertakings. In response to the ruling Communist Party's call for building "socialist new villages," the programme promises to provide free training of rural school teachers and to build more infrastructural facilities in suburban Beijing, including, in particular, projects for the supply of potable water in mountainous rural areas. According to the programme, at least 70 percent of any increase in municipal government spending on education, healthcare, cultural undertakings and family planning should go to rural areas, and not less than half of the municipal government's investment in fixed assets should go to these outlying areas.