On April 1, the Chinese State Council fired a bolt from the blue by announcing that a special zone called the Xiongan New Area is to be established 130km from Beijing in Hebei Province’s Xiong, Rongcheng and Anxin counties. The planned area is classified as a “subsidiary center” of Beijing and the government is hailing it as “a strategy crucial for a millennium to come.”
The Xiongan New Area will play a significant role in balancing northern China’s regional development. Chinese officials have in the past called for the integration of Beijing and Tianjin — municipalities that are directly controlled by the central government — with Hebei Province, but inadequate planning in areas such as transportation, water, energy and public services has caused Hebei’s capacity to be almost sucked dry by the two big cities.
Although there are plans for some departments of the Beijing Municipality Government to relocate to the city’s suburban Tongzhou District over the next few years, small-scale measures such as this are not enough to alleviate the capital’s burdens. The authorities must come up with a plan that is meticulous, bold and decisive.
About a decade ago, South Korea started to create twin-core capitals by relocating the majority of ministries and government institutes from Seoul to Yeongi County, which became the Sejong Special Self-Governing City in 2012.
Even if the Chinese administration works quickly and efficiently, it is likely to take about 10 years to complete the process of relocating government departments, businesses and schools, not to mention hundreds of thousands of people. This process will involve many challenges, but it will also create limitless business opportunities and be a motivating force for development.
Taiwan’s urban and rural resources are unevenly distributed, and there has long been a need for visionary political leaders to show their resolve to close the gap between the north and the south.
Transnational urban research projects carried out by several international institutions list Taipei as one of the world’s most risk-prone cities. In a composite index including risk factors such as storms, earthquakes and financial crashes, Taipei is listed as even more vulnerable than second-placed Tokyo.
A report published by international credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s says that a major disaster can cut a nation’s sovereign credit rating, and it lists Taiwan as one of the 10 most vulnerable nations.
Taiwan’s political, cultural and economic centers are all concentrated in Taipei. Taking securities and currency transactions as an example, whenever a typhoon causes work and classes to be canceled in Taipei, even if there is fine, sunny weather in Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung, all trading has to stop across the nation.
Having all resources focused on Taipei has also driven up its real-estate prices to unbearable levels. The division of the nation into two worlds — one for the rich and privileged and the other for the rest of the population — has only grown deeper.
Several leading members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party have proposed making Taichung a secondary capital.
Jhongsing New Village (中興新村), the former seat of the Taiwan Provincial Government in Nantou County, could be revived, linked up with neighboring areas and expanded into a “Taichung-Changhua-Nantou New Area.”
The executive, legislative, judicial, control and examination branches of government, state-run companies, public universities, and securities and financial markets could be relocated to this area. Such a bold plan would do more for the nation’s overall development than the Cabinet’s so-called Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, which has more to do with giving political parties’ local agents a chance to make money.
In terms of Taiwan’s north-south layout, the “Taichung-Changhua-Nantou New Area” would be the central node. Given its geographical advantage, it could connect the nation’s two biggest cities — Taipei and Kaohsiung — as well as the eastern and western regions on either side of the Central Mountain Range, making human and economic resources more mobile.
Moving some of Taipei’s political and economic functions to central Taiwan would also balance out development of the north, south, east and west, and spread the risks associated with the world’s riskiest city — Taipei.
If the “Xiongan New Area” is “a strategy crucial for a millennium to come,” then those responsible for Taiwan’s “Taichung-Changhua-Nantou New Area,” should it come to be, would also secure a place in history.
Jason Yeh is an associate professor of finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Translated by Edward Jones and Julian Clegg
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