Chinese vice premier calls for Jing-jin-ji integrated development

BEIJING - Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng on Thursday urged more efforts to promote the integrated and coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

Han, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks while presiding over a meeting.

Han called for new breakthroughs in the planning and construction of Xiongan New Area and Beijing subcenter in Tongzhou, ecological environment protection, and co-construction and sharing of basic public services in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

Efforts should be made to relocate the non-capital functions of Beijing in an active, proper and orderly manner, he said.

He stressed high-quality and high-standard planning and development of the Xiongan New Area, and quality in the construction of the sub-center in Beijing.

He also urged intensified efforts to accelerate infrastructure construction in the area such as auxiliary projects of the Beijing Daxing International Airport which is set to open in 2019.

The country initiated a key strategy in 2014 to coordinate the development of Beijing, its neighboring port city Tianjin, and Hebei Province -- a regional city cluster called "Jing-jin-ji."

A prominent task of the "Jing-jin-ji" strategy is to move the non-capital functions out of Beijing to treat "urban ills" in the Chinese capital, such as traffic jams and pollution.

In April 2017, China announced the establishment of the Xiongan New Area, which, about 100 km southwest of Beijing, spans three counties in Hebei.