The Year of the Rooster Review

A fundamental task for the new era

China announced it will establish Xiongan New Area in North China's Hebei province, about 100 kilometers southwest of downtown Beijing, covering the counties of Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin. A fundamental task for the new era, it will absorb part of the non-capital functions of Beijing.

We invited a professor to comment:

While designed to offload part of Beijing's noncapital functions, which have not yet been elaborated by decision-makers, Xiongan New Area attaches equal importance to "reform" and "opening-up". In other words, the new area has great potential to become an exemplary economic zone driven by reform and innovation.

Xiongan New Area is also expected to guide the overhauling of the economic mechanism. The reform in previous new areas has been mostly "opening-up oriented", which is in line with the country's reform and opening-up practice over the past decades.

Xiongan's mode may create a reform-driven model.

On its part, the new area needs to seize the opportunity to improve its not-so-competitive industrial base, in a bid to supplement the efforts to expedite regional integration.