On April 1, 2017—April Fool’s Day—the government made a surprise announcement that a satellite city bigger than New York would be built from scratch on the outskirts of Beijing. Official news site Xinhua described Xiong’an New District as the “plan of the millennium” and “a major national event.”
Speaking to newspaper Southern Weekly on April 2, Yang Kaizhong, a professor at Peking University and director of the university’s Jing-Jin-Ji Coordinated Development Joint Innovation Center, declared Xiong’an “an auxiliary capital,” by which he meant a second city to accommodate the overspill of Beijing’s rising population. Prior to this announcement, in July 2015, Beijing decided to move its municipal administration to Tongzhou on the border with neighboring Hebei province in another move to reduce the population pressure on the capital.
Speaking to newspaper Southern Weekly on April 2, Yang Kaizhong, a professor at Peking University and director of the university’s Jing-Jin-Ji Coordinated Development Joint Innovation Center, declared Xiong’an “an auxiliary capital,” by which he meant a second city to accommodate the overspill of Beijing’s rising population. Prior to this announcement, in July 2015, Beijing decided to move its municipal administration to Tongzhou on the border with neighboring Hebei province in another move to reduce the population pressure on the capital.
