With China's reform and opening up, Beijing is improving urban construction on an unprecedented scale. Its speed of development is astonishing and it brings about changes day by day. Around this graceful ancient capital, a large number of key national projects, massive infrastructure buildings have sprung up.

Prospect

Approaching the turn of the millennium, Beijing has mapped its blueprint for tomorrow:

By 2010, Beijing will achieve an all-round development of economic and social development. The functions as political and cultural center will be further enhanced and brought to perfection. It will become the best city with the most developed culture, education, science and technology, social ethics and conventions and democracy and legal system. An economic system suited to the characteristics of the capital will be completed, led by a new and high technology industry, with developed tertiary industry, rational industrial Structure and high efficiency and high quality. The people's living standards will be raised to a higher level on the basis of a comfortable level. The city environment will be further improved and the city's management level will be improved markedly. By 2010, the GDP will be double that of 2000 and a fairly perfect socialist market system will take shape. The comprehensive strength of the economy, science and technology and social development will reach or surpass in some aspects the levels of capital cities of middle developed countries. By the mid-21st century, Beijing will become a modern international metropolis.

With full confidence, Beijing is on its march into the new century.

New Concepts

Economic reform and opening up have created wide variety of new job opportunities. Many of them have never been heard of. These include clerks at foreign companies, fashion models, and free-lance artists. Taking up these jobs are mostly young people.

At present, Beijing is home to tens of thousand of Chinese, foreign and Sino-foreign companies, which between them have a work force of hundreds of thousands. Foreign companies alone have employed more than 20,000 locals. Most of them are young professionals and receive high incomes. Their presence can be found in all high-ticket consumption sites. On the Beijing streets, one could often see young people holding mobile phones and driving private cars. Most of them are rising business people.

In the past young people used to have their jobs arranged by the government. But today they have shown much interest in taking up their own business to become bosses. They run companies or open shops, exhibiting great enthusiasm. There are also some young people eager to experience life, becoming freelances or change their job frequently.

Young parents are not mince at money to enable their children to receive overall and modern education, thus giving rise to all kinds of spare time training class. They hope their children would learn to play piano, chess or sing and dance. Toys designed for intelligence development have become very popular. Education of children has become a matter of first and foremost importance in a family.

It has become a new fad for young people to learn driving, operating computers and foreign languages. They hope to master more knowledge and skills in order to cope with the rapid development of the society.

Today's Beijing is developing into a world-class city with unprecedented speed. Only by being in Beijing, can you feel the boundless vitality, the breath enormous changes in the people's solid step into a bright future.

Modern Beijing

Beijing thrives today as the political and cultural capital of China as well as a center of international activity and an important socialist base.

Great changes have taken place since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The city walls were demolished to facilitate transportation and allow for general expansion. By 2001, the population exceeded 12.5 million, and the total municipal area was increased to over 17,800 square kilometers. The city is presently divided into 16 districts: Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chongwen, Xuanwu, Chaoyang, Haidian, Shijingshan, Fengtai, Shunyi, Changping, Mentougou, Tongzhou, Fangshan, Daxing, Huairou and Pinggu. In addition to these urban districts, the municipality is comprised of two counties: Miyun and Yanqing.

Plans for future development retain the symmetrical layout of the old city on its north-south axis, extending out into the suburban districts.

From Dingfuzhuang in the east to Shijingshan in the west and from Qinghe in the north to Nanyuan in the south, the overall plan covers an area of 1,000 square kilometers. A traffic network of four concentric beltways, 28 radial roads, and underground and suburban railways are being further developed to link the city center with outlying areas and surrounding towns.

With Tian'anmen at the center, offices along 38-kilometer-long Chang'an Boulevard will concentrate on state, political and economic affairs. The areas around the Palace Museum (Imperial Palace or Forbidden City) and city gates as well as the lakes -- Zhongnanhai, Beihai and Housanhai -- have been designated landmark districts. And with a look to the future, an increasing number of historical, cultural and revolutionary sites are being renovated and opened to the public.

Urban Construction

An annual investment of over hundreds of billion Chinese Yuan input in fixed assets has not only spurred the rapid development of the local economy, but also laid a solid foundation for future development. Year 2002 saw the accumulative investment in fixed assets amounting to 181.43 billion Yuan.

Implemented investment for infrastructure in 2002 equaled 41.19 billion Yuan (approximately 4.96 billion U.S. dollars), reaching a record high in Beijing's infrastructure investment history.

Environment Protection and Afforestation

After recent years of environment protection efforts since 1998 with dozens of air quality control measures taken in eight phases, Beijing witnessed significant improvement in terms of air quality. In 2002, two hundred and three days in Beijing were rated to have good and excellent air quality. All the pollutant-emitting enterprises have take measures to turn their emissions environmental friendly. There are 4,681 coal-consuming furnaces have switches its power supply from coal to clean energies. Natural gas supply in Beijing reached 2.05 billion cubic meters. Over four million square meters of heating space are now fuelled by electricity. A total of 1,800 public transportation buses are now using clean fuel. About 80.4% of all the vehicles in Beijing have met the environmental standard of exhaust emission.

Beijing is also working on the establishment of greenbelt in the city. In 2002, over 51 green areas in urban region and 110 square kilometers of greenbelts around the city were built. Over 200,000 mu (nearly 13,333 hectares) of mountainous areas and 40,000 mu (nearly 2,667 hectares) of land in five places, which were haunted by dust and wind in Beijing were planted with trees. By the end of 2002, public green space reached 7,907 hectares. Trees and grass coverage ratios of Beijing and urban area in Beijing are 45.5% and 40.2% respectively.

In terms of urban water system improvement, the Yuyuantan, South Moat and Tonghui River-Gaobeidian Lake water system have been dredged and were turned into a site-seeing waterway route. Daily urban sewage processing capability reached 1.8 million tons, which is 25.9% higher than that of the previous year. Annual sewage processing rate equaled 45%.

Pilot garbage sorting and collection projects have been carried out in 250 inhabitant areas. The first phase of Gao'antun Garbage Handling Factory became operational in 2002. Urban garbage has been cleaned and processed daily. About 86.5% of the urban garbage in 2002 was processed to be environmentally harmless.