Beijing eyes quality development

Beijing is ready for a brighter future with healthy economic growth and well planned urban space.

At a meeting on Beijing's economy on Friday, Mayor Wang Anshun said economic growth has been steady with better structure and efficiency in the first half of this year.

Information released during the meeting shows the city's GDP growing in H1 by 7 percent from the same period last year, while energy consumption per 10,000 yuan (1,600 U. S. dollars) of GDP dropped by over 6 percent.

In H1, some 40.8 percent of the city's fixed asset investment came from private investors. The number of new sci-tech enterprises grew by 29.5 percent. Finance, information services and sci-tech services jointly contributed 73.3 percent to growth in H1.

Air quality has also improved. Concentration of PM2.5, airborne particles measuring less than 2.5 microns, dropped to 77.7 micrograms per cubic meter, down over 15 percent year on year.

During the first six months of 2015, Beijing closed or relocated 185 polluting factories and a total of 300 will be shut down or relocated by the end of the year.

Wang Anshun also said that the city will improve management to ease problems in population, traffic congestion and pollution. In H1, Beijing shut down 60 low-end wholesale markets and upgraded another ten markets to ease congestion.

The population will be capped at 21.77 million at the end of this year.The population reached 21.516 million at the end of 2014, putting pressure on the water supply, air quality, traffic and biodiversity.

During the meeting, the government decided to start construction of six new subway lines and increase the length of the metro system by 27 kilometers this year.

Over the weekend, Beijing announced that it would move some of its administration out of the city center to a new municipal subsidiary administrative center in the eastern suburbs. Endi