Journey to the East.docVIP

Journey to the East 　　Speculation over whether Beijing’s municipal government would relocate some administrative departments from the city center to the eastern suburbs finally ended when Beijing Party Secretary Guo Jinlong officially announced at a July plenary session of the city’s Party committee that the district of Tongzhou would become a “subsidiary administrative center.” 　　Two functions of the mooted “executive sub-center” were highlighted in Guo’s speech― easing pressure on city center infrastructure through population transfers， and advancing the national-level Beijing-TianjinHebei integrated development plan， which was also passed by Party officials at the same meeting. 　　Beijing is now set to go all-out to accelerate the goal of regional integration. Guo described this as a challenging task， but also a necessary solution to many of the current problems facing the city’s urban planners. 　　The planned executive sub-center will be located in Lucheng， Tongzhou District， 20 kilometers from Tian’anmen Square. While details of the relocation are yet to be released， officials have claimed that the plan would have made “remarkable progress” by 2017. 　　 Move 　　Tongzhou’s selection as the new home for elements of Beijing’s municipal government is a logical one. As early as 1993， Tongzhou was named a “satellite town” of the capital， before being upgraded to a city district in 1997. In 2004， the Beijing government announced that Tongzhou would play a supplementary role in city administration， a move which sparked speculation that the government would relocate to the area. 　　In July 2012 the Beijing government announced its plan to build Tongzhou into a city sub-center. In a Beijing municipal government work report released in February 2015， the local government pledged to speed up the construction of Tongzhou as a city sub-center and to break ground on a total of 86 approved key projects in its core areas， representing an investment of nearly 164 billion y