In order to take pressure off Beijing’s central districts, suburban Tongzhou has been designated as a “second city center” and some municipal and national government bodies are gradually moving there. Amid the massive construction going on in the district, the government is struggling to fill the gap left by “undesirable” companies and relocated locals with talented people and high-end firms.
Thirty-year-old Wang Feng has five apartments in Beijing, adding up to more than 10 million yuan ($1,505,343) of assets. He lives in Zhangwan, a town right outside of the East Sixth Ring Road, on the southeast corner of the city’s suburban Tongzhou district.
But despite his financial security, Wang is envious of people living 10 kilometers north of him, who moved because their apartments were being demolished to make room for rapid new developments.
“Zhangwan houses aren’t worth that much, Lucheng’s are a real treasure,” Wang told Southern Weekly. Now some Tongzhou locals joke that if you marry a girl from Lucheng, you won’t have to work hard for the next 30 years.
The difference between the areas is that Lucheng is within the new “Beijing Second City Center,” and is at the core of the planned political center.
A year ago, in April 2015, the Chinese central government released a paper revealing that a “second city center” was to be built in the capital. Three months later, Tongzhou was mentioned. The policy was later referred to by the public as “moving Beijing out of Beijing.”
The only time establishing a second city center was brought up before Tongzhou was when Shanghai gave its Pudong area a makeover. Even though many doubts arose at that time, Pudong has now become one of the city’s most glamorous districts.
Before it was given this new status, Tongzhou was a “sleeper town,” its cheap housing and good transport links making it a popular choice for commuters working in the city center.
But over the last year, Tongzhou has been turned upside-down.
Winds of change
According to an official statement from the Beijing government, before the end of 2017, the Beijing Municipal Party committee, the city government, the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee will all be moving to Lucheng. Afterwards, some companies will gradually move to other towns in Tongzhou.
The political district will take up 15 square kilometers and as of now, six villages have been demolished and nearly 8,600 people relocated, with a total investment of 16.2 billion yuan.
One of the villages demolished first is called Hejiafu, and it’s situated right in the middle of the new political zone. It will become a residential neighborhood for civil servants.
Gradually, new facilities are being built in Tongzhou. Subway stations are being built in Hejiafu. To the north of the station is the future site of the local government headquarters, and the south is where the homes of civil servants will sit.
During the annual two legislative sessions in March, vice mayor Li Shixiang told media that the Beijing government will build dormitories for civil servants over 40 and apartments for those under 30. This has been seen by some as an attempt to ensure that younger, highly-educated officials accept the move to Tongzhou.
Another inevitable consequence is the immediate increase in house prices.
In 2012, when Liu Jun first bought a house in Tongzhou, the price was about 18,000 yuan per square meter, but now this has doubled. The government has put heavy restrictions on buying houses in Tongzhou, declaring that one is only qualified to buy houses in the district if one has a household registration there or has paid taxes and social insurance there. Such policies are the strictest ever implemented in Beijing.
Even so, data show that a year after it was announced that Tongzhou was the new second center, house prices increased by 40 percent.
Liu found that other kinds of investment has come to the area as well, in anticipation of the influx of civil servants.
“Before Tongzhou became the second center, traffic never jammed, mostly elderly people lived in the area and there were only three movie theaters in the entire district. There were no malls either,” he told Southern Weekly.
But nowadays, there are about 10 movie theaters in Tongzhou. Large shopping malls such as one run by Wanda have popped up in the area and some shops even have banners that read “No need to go into town to shop.”
Gradually, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a parking space near Liu’s residential compound. Traffic jams have become a regular sight in Tongzhou, just like everywhere else in Beijing.
In the past, advertisement billboards along the roads were often vacant. Now they are almost all occupied by advertisements for maternity wards and hospitals.
The Beijing government has on multiple occasions declared there will be education, health and old age care centers in Tongzhou, even more per person than in the city center. There also will be paths for walking and cycling.
Tongzhou district director Yue Peng also said schools based in the central Haidian, Xicheng and Dongcheng districts will open kindergartens in Tongzhou. Multiple well-known high schools and elementary schools will be opening campuses in the area.
Emptying and attracting
A household registration restriction is also being implemented, limiting the number of people qualified to obtain residency there to only a handful.
Chen Jian has been in Tongzhou for more than 10 years. He has opened up a small factory there. But now, he’s moving all the way to the South Sixth Ring Road, because it’s likely that government will talk him into moving out of Tongzhou this year.
His company makes molds for other businesses and this type of business isn’t seen as being advanced enough for the new, upscale Tongzhou.
Many of the businesses being moved out of Tongzhou are those the government says “do not qualify for standard of a second city center.” Analysts ran through a list of some 2,000 enterprises being moved and found most are in mass food production, heavy industry, processing or farming.
The enterprises which the government has designated as worthy to move into the second center are in information technology, finance, or creative industry and some are start-ups. Some talents are already accumulating in Tongzhou.
Wang Zhirui, who works for recruiting website Jingtong, said he has noticed that some middle-to-upper level executives who used to work in central districts are now moving to Tongzhou. He personally knows someone who used to work in the Zhongguancun IT district who moved to Tongzhou for a job that only pays half of his original salary, because he believes Tongzhou has a future.
But Tongzhou isn’t yet particularly attractive for these types of enterprises.
“I wanted to register a company in Tongzhou, but agencies tell me I need to pay them 6,000 yuan, and the registration itself costs 6,000 yuan a year,” a start-up founder told Southern Weekly. “But in Chaoyang district, agencies only charge 4,000 yuan and can register me for free.”
Moving out the “undesirable” companies so soon has created a temporary vacuum, analysts found. On one hand, companies are being moved out, but on the other hand, too few companies are moving in to support the local economy.
Furthermore, it’s proving difficult to find people to fill service or other low-level jobs. The government had expected Tongzhou locals to do these jobs but many, newly enriched by huge compensation payments, are not interested in pulling graveyard shifts at convenience stores or scrubbing toilets.
Another concern is unorganized development of the second center will create rather than solve problems.
Zhao Hong, vice dean of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China Economic Weekly that planners should have designed the city with multiple second centers or satellite towns from the beginning, connecting them with trains and plan out health care, education and public services firsthand, instead of installing them at this stage to solve the main city center’s congestion issues. He hopes Tongzhou won’t come down with Beijing center district’s problems in the future. www.globaltimes.cn/content/1000590.shtml
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