Management of the capital's population will be a major task during the coming five years after the number of people living in Beijing grew more quickly than predicted, delegates at the Beijing Municipal People's Congress heard this week.

During the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), one of the local government's main tasks will be to "curb the overly fast and disordered increase" of the population, said Yang Zhongqi, a deputy to the Beijing Municipal People's Congress (MPC).

The hukou policy, the building of "new cities", and enhancements to the industrial structure will all be used to manage the challenges, delegates were told.

During the coming five years, while continuing to strictly implement the hukou policy that effectively ties people to the communities where their forefathers were born, the city is also planning to more rationally allocate the quota of hukou. It plans to give priority to people with skills and educations that are in demand in Beijing.

Although the five-year plan does not mention exact numbers, the capital can absorb 23 million people, said Xu Jie, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Population and Family Planning.

But according to Yang, the population is already beyond the city's optimum level and more should be done in future to ensure it doesn't rise further.

Zhou Laisheng, another MPC deputy, agreed, saying the population issue is closely linked to other issues such as traffic, the environment and demand for water and power supplies.

Mao Daqing, deputy president of Vanke Group and a member of the CPPCC Beijing Committee, suggested that the city looks at the kind of work that is being allocated to migrants from other cities.

"The government can control different kinds of people coming to the city through their work passes," Mao said.

But some members of the CPPCC Beijing committee did not support his statement.

"The city cannot be sealed off because we still want to build it into an international city," said Wu Yongping, deputy dean of the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University.

Wu said migrant workers bring pressure to the city but they also contribute to its development. He said the capital should belong to everyone and be open to all.

"The government can consider 'the Greater Beijing area' when it measures the problem," Wu said.

"The Greater Beijing area" should include part of Hebei province and even Tianjin and the city's functions could be decentralized within that area, he suggested. He said the population would then spread out in the whole area and not be concentrated in the urban core of Beijing.

Some MPC deputies said population could also be managed via the economy.

"If the economy develops at top speed, the population will be difficult to control," said Deng Xiaohong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau.

Deng said every district and town has a development plan for the coming five years and each of them expects to have a growing population. She said the government should control the speed of economic development first and that will influence the growth of the capital's population.

Statistics show that by the end of 2010, the city's population had reached 19.72 million. That total includes 12.46 million residents with a Beijing hukou and 7.26 million people described as a floating population who have lived in the capital for more than six months but who do not have a local hukou.