Xi Jinping visits Xiongan New Area in show of impatience at lack of progress on ‘future city’ plan
- Week after president’s trip to north China’s Hebei province, Xinhua publishes 13,000-word document extolling virtues of ambitious development project
- Planned metropolis described as a ‘strategy crucial for a millennium to come’
Beijing has renewed its push to achieve President Xi Jinping’s ambitious plan to create a new metropolis in an industrial and environmental backwater after a two-year lull filled with uncertainty and criticism.
Pundits said the combination of the document and the visit sent a strong signal that despite widespread doubts about the soundness of the mega project and lack of progress on it, Xi had no intention of reconsidering his plan or further delaying its development.
“Apparently, Xi is not happy with the lack of progress,” said Gu Su, a political scientist at Nanjing University. “He wants to give it another push personally and speed up the development process, especially as he is facing pushbacks from his critics and divergent views over the project’s feasibility and economic viability.”
It is poorly guarded secret that Xi was personally behind the Xiongan project, which was launched in April 2017 in Hebei, an arid region prone to extreme weather and among the worst polluted in the country.
If successful, the development of the area, which is located about 100km (62 miles) southwest of Beijing, would be the largest infrastructure project in the history of modern China. In the new document it is described as signalling “a strategy crucial for a millennium to come”, with the aim of alleviating overcrowding in the capital and disparities in regional development.
