Visitors pose for photos in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Oct. 30, 2023. (Photo/Xinhua)
Chongqing - Chongqing has set out a blueprint to build a high-level modern people's city, rolling out seven priority tasks to guide its long-term development.
At the seventh plenary session of the sixth CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee on August 18, the city set phased development goals for 2027, 2030 and 2035, aiming to achieve six targets: cultivating new drivers of innovative and open growth, building a resilient and efficient safety system, creating a high-quality and inclusive living environment, shaping a green and low-carbon urban landscape, promoting values of integrity, kindness and cultural vitality, and developing new city governance models led by the Party.
Spokesperson for the CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee Jiang Hui, central, briefs a press conference on August 19. (Photo/Tan Xinyu)
"We are anchoring these targets by implementing seven key tasks: optimizing urban spatial planning, fostering endogenous innovation drivers, enhancing safety and resilience across the city, improving livability and urban functionality, advancing comprehensive green and low-carbon transformation, strengthening cultural soft power, and upgrading smart, collaborative governance for our mega-city," said Jiang Hui, Spokesperson for the CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee, at a press briefing on August 19.
"At the same time, we are further deepening reforms to unlock vitality in building a modern people's city, innovating integrated urban governance mechanisms, establishing a sustainable financing model for city construction and operation, improving shared governance and participation frameworks, and advancing urban-rural integration reforms."
Over 28 years since becoming a municipality directly under the central government, Chongqing has transformed from an old industrial base into a smart manufacturing hub and from an inland hinterland into an open gateway.
Its GDP has surpassed 3 trillion yuan ($417.83 billion), having increased more than 20 times since it first became a municipality, while urban residents' per capita disposable income has grown over eight times. The city's built-up area has expanded fourfold to 1,945 square kilometers, and its urban landscape has undergone radical reshaping.
Jiang said that over the years of urban development, Chongqing has built effective practices, including prioritizing a people-centered approach, leveraging digital tools for smart governance, pushing reforms to tackle development bottlenecks, integrating natural landscapes, urban infrastructure, and cultural assets for harmonious city development, and strengthening Party leadership to enhance governance capacity.
He added that the initiative to build a high-level modern people's city is based on three considerations.
First, the central government has entrusted Chongqing with a unique mission for building a modern people's city, with national strategies such as the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor, and the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle providing momentum and opportunities. Second, Chongqing's urban work has entered a new phase of high-quality development, shifting toward intensive, efficient growth, integrated smart governance, innovation-driven urban dynamics powered by technology, industry, and culture, and a cohesive, distinctive cityscape. Third, the city still faces structural challenges, including uneven regional development, insufficient coordination across planning, construction, operation, and governance, and demographic pressures, highlighting the need for new approaches to mega-city management.