City seeks limit of 23 million residents by 2020 to avoid water shortage
The Beijing government will "strictly curb its population growth" during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), officials reiterated during a meeting on Wednesday.
"Explosive population is the most prominent problem hindering Beijing's development, and we are going to curb the population to within 23 million by the end of 2020. One of the major reasons for control is that the city is facing a severe water shortage," Guo Jinlong, secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said during a plenary session of the 11th CPC Beijing Committee, which took place Tuesday and Wednesday.
Guo was quoted by the China News Service (CNS) as saying that economic, legal and administrative measures will be adopted to control the population, such as "controlling business categories" and "optimizing the population structure."
Based on a survey by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics and the National Bureau of Statistics, the permanent population of Beijing as of December 2014 was 21.5 million, a number which already exceeds the 2020 target population of 18 million set in 2005.
Since population control is a long-term task, it will be difficult for the problem to be solved within five years, Zhou Haiwang, an expert with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
But the government has made some progress, Zhou said, explaining that the growth rate of Beijing's population is expected to slow down as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Development Program moves forward, since the program includes plans to relocate many labor-intensive industries to areas outside the capital.
The number of Beijing permanent residents only increased by 368,000 in 2014, amounting to a 1.7 percent growth rate, the lowest since 2006, the CNS reported.
"Industrial changes, tightened residency policies and pollution ... have all contributed to the slow growth of Beijing's population," Zhou said.
"However, it is unnecessary to attach too much importance to the city's population control, since Beijing is less attractive than before," said Li Jianmin, a professor at Tianjin-based Nankai University.
A blue book released by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in 2014 showed that of 40 worldwide cities surveyed, Beijing was ranked second to last in terms of its suitability as a place to live in, ahead of Moscow, the CNS reported.
