Beijing & Bohai Bay Rim Brief

BEIJING

Beijing, also been known in English as Peking, is a city in northern China and the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the four municipalities of the PRC, which are equivalent to provinces in China's administrative structure. The municipality of Beijing borders Hebei Province to the north, west, south, and for a small section in the east, and Tianjin Municipality to the southeast.1

Beijing is China's second largest city, after Shanghai. It is a major transportation hub, with dozens of railways, roads and motorways passing through the city. It is also the focal point of many international flights to China. Beijing is recognised as the political, educational, and cultural center of the People's Republic of China. The city will host the 2008 Summer Olympics.2

Geography and Climate

Mountains snake round the city's north, west and northeast, while the southeast part of the city is a plain that slopes gently toward the coast of the Bohai Sea.

The Yongding, Chaobai and Juma rivers and the north section of the Grand Cannel crisscross the area under Beijing's jurisdiction. Most of the rivers originate from mountainous areas in the northwest, cut through mountains and zigzag through the plain in the southeast before emptying into Bohai Sea. There are 85 reservoirs in Beijing, the Minyun, the Guanting thje Huairou and the Haizi which are the biggest 4.

Beijing belongs to the warm temperate zone with a semi-humid climate. It has four distinctive seasons, with short springs and autumns while summers and winters are always long.1

Economy

In 2006, Beijing's nominal GDP was 772.03 billion RMB (about 97 billion USD), a year-on-year growth of 12% from the previous year. Its GDP per capita was 49,505 RMB, an increase of 8.8% from the previous year and more than twice as much as in 2000. In 2005, Beijing's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries were worth 9.77 billion RMB, 210.05 billion RMB, and 461.63 billion RMB. In 2008, Urban disposable income per capita was 21,989 yuan, a real increase of 10% from the previous year. Per capita pure income of rural residents was 9,559 RMB, a real increase of 10.9%.3 Per capita disposable income of the 20% low-income residents increased 16.7%, 11.4 percentage points higher than the growth rate of the 20% high-income residents. The Engel's coefficient of Beijing's urban residents reached 31.8% in 2005 and that of the rural residents was 32.8%, declining 4.5 percentage points and 3.9 percentage points, respectively, compared with 2000.

Beijing's real estate and automobile sectors have continued to bloom in recent years. In 2005, a total of 28.032 million square metres of housing real estate was sold, for a total of 175.88 billion RMB. The total number of cars registered in Beijing in 2004 was 2,146,000, of which 1,540,000 were privately-owned (a year-on-year increase of 18.7%).4

Beijing is increasingly becoming known for its innovative entrepreneurs and high-growth start-ups. This culture is backed by a large community of both Chinese and foreign venture capital firms, such as Sequoia Capital,5 whose head office in China resides in Chaoyang, Beijing. Though Shanghai is seen as the economic centre of China, this is typically based on the numerous large corporations based there, rather than as a centre for Chinese entrepreneurship.

The development of Beijing continues to proceed at a rapid pace, and the vast expansion of Beijing has created a multitude of problems for the city. Beijing is known for its smog as well as the frequent "power-saving" programmes instituted by the government. Citizens of Beijing as well as tourists frequently complain about the quality of the water supply and the cost of the basic services such as electricity and natural gas. The major industrial areas outside of Beijing were ordered to clean their operations or leave the Beijing area in an effort to alleviate the smog that covers the city. Most factories, unable to update, have moved and relocated to other cities such as Xi'an, China.

Demographics

The population of Beijing Municipality, defined as the total number of people who reside in Beijing for 6 months or more per year, was 17.43 million in 2007. The population of Beijing's urban core (city proper) is around 7.5 million.

Beijing is a multi-religions city, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism, among which, Taoism, Buddhism and Islam all have the major influence upon Beijing��s history, culture and art.

BOHAI BAY RIM

The Bohai Bay Rim economic region is made up of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Liaoning, the so-called 3+2 area. Covering 518,000 square kilometers, the area, with a population of 230 million, or 17.5 percent of the national total, generates gross product of 3.8 trillion yuan, 28.2 percent of the country's total.

The Bohai Bay Rim economic region has been traditionally well-developed in heavy industries, with strengths in ports (Tianjin), logistics (Tianjin), steel (Anyang, Shenyang), petrochemicals (Beijing, Tianjin), oil exploration (Bohai Sea). The development of the automobile, electronics and high-tech industries, and the construction of energy bases and transportation channels are emphasised for the future; all these are major sector thrusts for China as a whole (high value-add, R&D-intensive industries), suggesting that the Bohai industrial region will be the seat of major investments for years to come. This will be facilitated by the advanced communications, strong contingents of scientific and technical personnel and wealth of natural resources available in the area. China's biggest oil discovery in recent years just several weeks back in Bohai Bay is set to attract vast refinery and petrochemical investments in the region.

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