In 2022, Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province in southwest China, was voted the most livable city in China for the 14th consecutive year in a survey conducted by Oriental Outlook, a Shanghai-based news weekly. When young adults are tired of highly competitive work and living environments in some megacities, for example, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, going to Chengdu to avoid the hyper-competitive culture has become a popular choice.

Chengdu's resident population had grown 40 percent in 13 years, from 15.1 million to more than 21.2 million in 2022, according to official statistics. However, as more and more people move there, the city is beginning to share much of the competitive culture prevalent in megacities.

An article discussing whether Chengdu is losing its appeal has recently been circulated widely on social media. "Fewer opportunities, lower salaries and poor employment benefits..." are reasons job seekers are looking elsewhere, the article read.

The city, famous for its slow-paced life, is facing the challenge of maintaining its comfortable living environment while welcoming a boom in industry and millions of new residents, the article continued.

"People vote with their feet," Wang Qiang, Deputy Director of the Institute for China Sustainable Urbanization (ICSU) at Tsinghua University, told Beijing Review, stressing that despite the growing complaints, Chengdu remains a preferable destination for both young people hoping to strike a better work-life balance and industries seeking to explore the market in west China.

"Chengdu's problems may be solved by the development of the Chengdu Metropolitan Area (CMA)," Wang added. The CMA is an important part of the national strategy to foster several such areas, where a central city is integrated with surrounding smaller cities and regions, for which it provides economic and social coordination. 

The Chengdu metropolis 

A plan for CMA development was published in November 2021, making it the first national-level metropolitan area in central and west China. In addition to Chengdu, the CMA also consists of Deyang, Meishan and Ziyang cities, which are already closely integrated with the provincial capital.

The CMA will cover an area of about 33,133 square km and had a permanent population of approximately 30 million at the end of 2021, Yin Hong, Executive Deputy Director of the office responsible for the project, said at a conference on the CMA program at Tsinghua University in Beijing on May 10. The conference also released a report on high-quality development within the area.

The CMA's economy is leading in central and western China. Its total GDP reached over 2.5 trillion yuan ($359.2 billion) in 2021, with a year-on-year growth rate of 12.1 percent, according to the report. In the same year, the total import and export volume of the four CMA cities exceeded 800 billion yuan ($115 billion), up 15.6 percent on the previous year. The local urbanization rate reached 71.2 percent that year, which was higher than the average of both Sichuan and the country as a whole, the report stated.

The CMA has already largely taken shape, the report continued. The gap between urban and rural areas has shrunk in terms of per-capita disposable income and consumption. Indexes on green lifestyles, international cooperation, foreign trade, education and healthcare have also showed positive trends.

A collaborative method 

According to the plan released in 2021, Chengdu's capacity for leading CMA integration will be enhanced, intercity connectivity in the area will be strengthened, and better use will be made of the comparative advantages of each of the regional cities.

"The collaboration between Chengdu and the other three cities could help reduce the pressures of growing population and accelerating industrialization on Chengdu," Wang said. For example, enterprises could establish their research centers in Chengdu, and put their labor-intensive production facilities in the other three cities.

The development of the CMA will also allow Chengdu to share its experience in advancing modernization with the other cities in the area, the report added. Currently, the average daily flow of people between the four cities is approximately 600,000, an increase of 70,000 compared with 2019. The connection between the cities in manufacturing and service industries are also intensifying, the report said.

The closer connections are also based on the improvement of infrastructure such as transportation networks. The total mileage of urban rail transit in operation in the CMA is 558 km, ranking fourth among China's cities and the construction of railway lines between Chengdu and the other three cities is already completed, according to Yin.

The four cities have also established a dialogue mechanism to facilitate cooperation on protecting their shared waterways, according to a report from China Daily on May 11.

Zhang Xueliang, a professor of regional and urban economy at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said at the conference that coordinated modernization of Chengdu and its neighboring cities is essential to promoting the area's high-quality development, and these cities should grow together.

Keep moving 

China's main metropolitan areas, occupying 14 percent of the country's territory, are home to approximately 50 percent of its population and contribute 65 percent of its economic output, according to a report by the ICSU in 2021.

A metropolitan area is not only of vital importance to high-quality urbanization, but also is a powerful engine supporting high-quality regional development, the conference said. It plays an important role in leading scientific and technological innovation breakthroughs, boosting domestic demand, creating international linkages and improving the quality of life.

In the past, the population movement was from rural areas to cities and then on to central cities. In the future, it will be from central cities into a wider metropolitan areas. Therefore, it is important to study the development of metropolitan areas, Zhou Nan, former Deputy Director General of the Department of Development Planning under the National Development and Reform Commission, said at the conference.

Additionally, the development of China's metropolitan areas should have an international perspective and give equal importance to both land and sea ports, according to Zhang. For example, to complement the role of the coastal metropolises, which often incorporate sea ports, the CMA could focus on building a land port linking the Eurasian Continent via the China-Europe freight rail service.

China's modernization is the modernization with a huge population and metropolises provide large living spaces. Therefore, the exploration of the development of metropolitan areas could also contribute possible insights to China's modernization, Yin Zhi, Vice Dean of the ICSU, concluded.

(Print Edition Title: Joint Development) 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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