Thirtyish entrepreneur Deng Zhao's experience is typical of those living in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province. Born in Cangzhou, Hebei, he went to college at Tsinghua University in Beijing before starting his own business in Tianjin.

Now he commutes between Beijing and Tianjin at least three times a week and returns to his hometown in Hebei for holidays and occasional weekends. "For me, the three places are more like one," he told Tianjin Daily.

This feeling of connectedness is partly the result of the region's transportation network. The high-speed rail trip from Beijing to Cangzhou takes less than an hour, that from Beijing to Tianjin takes half an hour and the 100-km trip from Cangzhou to Tianjin takes just 20 minutes.

Another reason is the increasing coordination within the city cluster. Deng founded his investment firm in Tianjin in 2016, two years after China initiated the plan to coordinate the development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. Named with the Jing from Beijing, the Jin from Tianjin and Ji, the traditional name of Hebei Province, the Jing-Jin-Ji cluster is home to approximately 8 percent of China's population.

The plan is a Chinese solution to big city problems. It includes moving institutions performing functions non-essential to Beijing's role as the capital out of the city, and ensuring a balance of resources throughout the cluster. The aim of the plan is to create a model city cluster with a better economic structure, cleaner environment and improved public services.

During an inspection tour on May 10-12 in Hebei, Chinese President Xi Jinping noted that Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are among the major driving forces of the country's high-quality growth and called for efforts to reach new heights in the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

Hi-tech cooperation 

Increasing the coordinated development of the cluster has been the priority of Tianjin's government since 2014 and it has released a series of policies to attract investment and startups. Seeing the potential of the city, Deng chose it as his business base.

Both a witness to and participant in the process, Deng has seen vast changes in Tianjin. Some of his friends from Beijing and schoolmates from Tsinghua University also started business in the city. Over the past seven years, 25 entrepreneurs have established their companies in Tianjin at Deng's suggestion.

Beijing and Tianjin have complementary advantages in hi-tech development, with Beijing being known as a research and development center and Tianjin for its strength in manufacturing. "The combination of the two is expected to further optimize resources utilization," Deng said.

On May 18, the Seventh World Intelligence Congress, a major artificial intelligence event in China, opened in Tianjin. Launched in the city in 2017, the annual congress has become one of the city's most iconic events.

Hi-tech cooperation has played a key role in the cluster's coordinated development. Beijing's Zhongguancun area, also known as China's Silicon Valley, is an important source of technological innovation within the cluster. So far, enterprises based in Zhongguancun have established more than 9,500 branches in Tianjin and Hebei.

The region's capacity for innovation has been continuously increasing through the establishment of innovation platforms such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Transformation Center for Scientific and Technological Achievements. Information from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) shows that, as of 2022, the total turnover of Beijing's technology contracts flowing to the two localities exceeded 210 billion yuan ($30 billion).

Deeper integration 

Institutions performing functions non-essential to Beijing's role as the capital are being moved out of the city, mostly to Hebei.

Thousands of manufacturing enterprises have also been moved out of Beijing since 2014. About 1,000 wholesale markets and logistics centers have been relocated from the capital.

Tianjin, home to one of the world's busiest ports and a sprawling transport web, has played a larger role in developing logistics within the cluster.

Tongzhou District in the eastern suburbs of Beijing and Xiongan New Area serve as the two wings of the Jing-Jin-Ji cluster. The latter is an emerging area in Hebei, founded in 2017 with an ambitious plan to become China's hi-tech city of the future. Beijing has shifted the administrative departments of its municipal government to Tongzhou District.

According to the Hebei Provincial Government, as of this January, China's major state-owned enterprises had set up more than 140 subsidiaries and branches in Xiongan, with many other enterprises following.

Four key universities, including China University of Geosciences, Beijing Jiaotong University, University of Science and Technology Beijing and Beijing Forestry University are scheduled to be relocated in Xiongan. Fifty-nine top schools in other areas of the Jing-Jin-Ji region have established cooperation with 61 schools in Xiongan New Area. 

A "3+2" model has been explored for vocational education—three years of training students in secondary vocational schools in one city of the cluster and two years in higher vocational schools in another city. In 2022, six Beijing-Tianjin vocational schools together recruited more than 3,000 students from Hebei, an increase of 50 percent over the previous year.

Work has also been done to unify public health insurance within the cluster. Starting from April 1 this year, residents with public health insurance in this cluster can enjoy reimbursement of medical insurance without going through filing procedures in advance, anywhere in the Jing-Jin-Ji cluster. The sharing of medical records and test results between the areas of the cluster has also been enhanced.

Improvements are also being made to the coordinated protection and restoration of the cluster's ecology. The average annual concentration of PM2.5, air pollution particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, in Beijing in 2022 was 30 micrograms per cubic meter, down 66.5 percent from 2013. The water quality of Baiyangdian Lake, the largest freshwater lake in north China, has also improved a lot.

Chen Yao, Deputy Director of the China Association of Regional Economics, regards 2023 as a year to shift the focus of the coordinated development from tackling Beijing's "urban diseases" to improving the overall competitiveness of the cluster.

The cluster should continue to strengthen its connections to magnify the spillover effects from Beijing, increase coordination within the cluster and build it into a world-class city cluster by 2030, in accordance with the government plan, Chen said.

Figures from the NDRC show that the cluster's total GDP was 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) in 2022, 1.8 times that in 2013.

"There is still more room for improving this cluster's competitiveness than in Yangtze River Delta and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area [city clusters]," he told Global Times.

(Print Edition Title: From Three to One) 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

Comments to yuanyuan@cicgamericas.com