Industries, govt departments under pressure to get out of Beijing

Zhang Jing (pseudonym) hopes that she can transform her little clothes stall into a registered company within a few years, so she can avoid being pushed out of Beijing and into neighboring Hebei Province.

A Beijing local, Zhang has been running a clothing business at the Zoo Clothes Wholesale Market in Xicheng district.

There are about 10 people in her family who are doing business at the wholesale market, but if the government carries out its plan to move the entire market to Hebei, their lives will be transformed.

This plan has been on the municipal government's books for quite some time. It is part of a bigger push to alter the structure of the city to reduce strain on infrastructure and better deal with pollution issues, according to a swathe of media reports.

The plan involves pushing out resources that aren't considered core functions in Beijing, such as wholesale markets. Scientific and cultural organizations under the government will also be pushed out of Beijing to surrounding areas.

But some of those who are being pushed are trying to push back.

Grand plan

On February 26, Chinese President Xi Jinping brought up the concept of a "capital economy circle," seeking to push Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province to develop together, and hinted that policy changes would follow.

Some experts have indicated this is also a move to tackle air pollution issues by joining forces with the surrounding regions, China Newsweek reported. According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, seven out of the 10 cities listed as having the worst air quality are in Hebei. If the surrounding regions don't join forces to develop together, Beijing's air quality will always be affected.

There are two types of companies that are considered non-core functions for the capital, Yang Kaizhong, a Peking University professor, told China Newsweek. Some low-profit economic sectors as well as public departments can be moved to Tianjin or Hebei.

On March 1, Guo Jinlong, the mayor of Beijing said at a municipal Party committee meeting that the government should foster the public sharing of education and medical resources in the region.

Analysts told the China Newsweek that some of the resources that have attracted people to migrate to Beijing, such as the quality of education and hospitals, will gradually move out as well, to ease the pressure on the city center. Data shows that every year more than 50 million people come from outside Beijing to seek hospital services.

Eviction from capital

At the end of last year, Beijing started the process of moving the Zoo Clothes Wholesale market, Dahongmen clothing wholesale market and Xinfadi agricultural goods market, the 21st Century Business Herald reported.

The Zoo Clothes Wholesale market began to form in the 1980s. From ramshackle clothing stalls beside the road, it slowly developed into a large market. Today, it is made up of several smaller ones, with an operating area of 300,000 square meters, about 13,000 clothing stalls and more than 30,000 employees.

The market at Dahongmen is on an even bigger scale. By 2010, it already had more than one million square meters in its operating area, more than 100,000 employees and more than 200,000 visits daily.

According to statistics from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning, there are hundreds of small trading markets in Beijing. The small markets in Dongcheng and Xicheng districts alone have provided employment opportunities for more than 200,000 people from outside Beijing.

Sun Shuo, the deputy executive of Xicheng district, said at a press conference in January that there isn't a specific timetable for the move at present, right now the task is mostly in the researching and planning phase. But he expressed certainty that the markets are moving out of Beijing's center as part of the bigger plan.