How will the just established Xiongan New Area be developed? The Xinhua News Agency outlined the past and future planning in an article on its website on April 14. The following is an edited version of it:

The state announcement on April 1 to set up the Xiongan New Area, about 100 km south of Beijing, came after years of research and thinking by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee. It is also a major strategic decision that will open a new era of development in the region, which spans three counties in north China's Hebei Province—Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin—with an eventual area of 2,000 square km and a population of 2 to 2.5 million.

A millennium plan 

President Xi Jinping drew an analogy between the legend of Chinese hero Dayu, who contained floods by having riverbeds dredged so that they could hold more water rather than creating flood barriers, and clearing unnecessary functions from the capital Beijing so that business could operate with greater efficiency.

"The capital's core functions should be preserved and strengthened, and some inappropriate functions adjusted and weakened," Xi said. "Some operations should be transferred to Hebei and Tianjin."

Addressing a central economic meeting at the end of 2014, Xi, who is also General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said transferring Beijing's non-capital functions, lowering its population density and promoting economic and social development commensurate with its population and resources must be at the core of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region's coordinated development.

During CPC meetings in April 2015, he suggested exploring the possibility of a new city in Hebei, built according to new development concepts.

On March 24, 2016, a report was given to the president on the creation of a "subsidiary center" for Beijing and an area where non-capital functions would be relocated from the capital. The subsidiary center will be located in the eastern suburb of Tongzhou while Xiongan is the other area.

Xi stressed that Beijing is at a historic juncture. Tongzhou and Xiongan will form two "wings" of the city and create new growth engines for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

On May 27, 2016, Xiongan appeared for the first time in a report reviewed at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

Calling it a "major historic and strategic decision" that would be "crucial for the millennium to come," Xi said the subsidiary center of Beijing and Xiongan would stand the test of history and be the legacy of this generation of CPC members.

People will see Xiongan, the Pudong New Area in Shanghai and the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in Guangdong Province forming a ladder from north to south across the map of China to act as testbeds for China's reform and opening up.

These areas are expected to work together to balance the country's development and change its make-up, which features a strong economy in the south and weaker economic development in the north.