Universities may exit Beijing under flagship plan

Some of China’s most eminent universities including Peking and Tsinghua are clustered around the Zhongguancun area in Beijing’s Haidian district, which likes to style itself as China’s ‘Silicon Valley’, attracting research institutions and thousands of high-tech enterprises.

But medium-term government plans to create a huge economic area combining Beijing with the nearby city of Tianjin and surrounding Hebei province, could mean the decentralisation of the capital’s knowledge hub.

New satellite campuses of existing universities could be set up outside Beijing, under plans still being finalised. In some cases institutions may leave the capital altogether in a quest for more space to expand students and research away from the polluted, traffic-choked city centre.

“The thinking is to turn this into a vast area for regional development,” said Hongyi Lai, associate professor at the University of Nottingham’s School of Contemporary Chinese Studies.

“Depending on how it is done, it could possibly be a good thing as it can make room for more important units or firms that would contribute to future development in Beijing.”

The transfer of universities outside the centre under the Jing-Jin-Ji plan, as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei plan is called, has generated a lot of debate in China even though it is still unclear how many will relocate completely.

Some Hebei cities close to Beijing, such as Beoding and Lanfang, have been constructing new university towns to attract premier institutions that want to decamp from the capital. However, those areas are still several hours’ drive from the centre of Beijing, with transport infrastructure not yet in place.

Space to expand

Beijing, with a population of 19 million, has recently been attempting to move polluting industries and even wholesale markets out of the city.

Official media argue that more space for top universities to expand research activities alongside science parks and industrial parks would be a major contribution to the knowledge economy.

“The most effective way to move population out of core Beijing and reduce the burden on the infrastructure of central Beijing is to move out some government agencies,” said Qiang Zha, associate professor of education at York University in Canada.

“But they have bargaining power, so it is easier to move universities – this could reduce the population by some 30,000 to 50,000 students. Beijing is becoming unaffordable for many to live there. They have to move some institutions out.”

Among the incentives offered to universities, according to Qiang, are larger plots of land.

According to official reports of arrangements being drawn up by the Ministry of Education and Beijing's education authority, parts of Renmin University of China, Minzu (Minorities) University, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing City University and Beijing Information Science and Technology University would move, at least in part, to outlying areas.

Universities could also be a way to develop the local economy outside Beijing and close the disparity between the capital and surrounding areas.

“But there could also be a negative effect,” said Qiang. “The new campuses could be less popular and less accessible – in short, the universities could suffer.”

Young people flock to the universities in the city and obtain coveted Beijing residence permits. Beijing has over 100 universities, many of them highly ranked.

Resistance

Resistance from academics has been reported in some newspapers, although the extent has been hard to gauge in a climate where academics have been told to be loyal to the party.

The Jing-Jin-Ji plan is reported to be a pet project of China’s President Xi Jinping, overseen by him personally.

In an indication of possible pressures on lower-tier universities, Beijing’s Executive Mayor Li Shixiang said earlier this year in remarks carried by the Communist Party organ People’s Daily that it was up to institutions themselves to decide where they would put their headquarters.

“We do not mean that universities and hospitals need to relocate their main campus but they should no longer expand [in central Beijing] and should be encouraged to set up branches outside Beijing.”

In the absence of an overall plan so far for relocations out of the centre of Beijing, information is trickling out piecemeal on which institutions and organisations will relocate.

Last month the official Xinhua news agency reported that Beijing’s Zhongguancun technology park will expand out of the capital.

Zhongguancun is central to Beijing’s innovation strategy and its 20,000 registered high tech companies are said to contribute 20% of the capital’s annual economic growth, according to unverified though official figures.

Under a recent agreement between Beijing and Tianjin, part of the Zhongguancun will move to the Tianjin Binhai New Area, designated as a special economic zone – SEZ – with tax breaks and other advantages.

The policies are similar to the Shenzhen SEZ in southern China, adjacent to Hong Kong and established in the 1980s as the country’s first zone. It has been a huge success, attracting investment and high-technology companies.

Shenzhen has also drawn large numbers of international university research centres in the past two decades.

Most recently, Shenzhen Mayor Xu Qin signed an agreement earlier this month to set up the Tsinghua-UC Berkeley joint institute to include graduate education. Three new collaborative research centres in Shenzhen will focus on nanotechnology, new energy technologies and data science.

Location important

While the Tsinghua-UC Berkeley joint institute provides a model for top Beijing institutions locating outside the capital as part of a prestigious partnership, Nottingham University’s Lai doubted that pressure to move out of Beijing would affect the main activities of the top Beijing institutions, including Peking and Tsinghua.

“The reason why these top institutions are so well known in China is partly because of their location,” Lai said, adding that they would need to stay in the capital in order to interact with foreign universities, attract overseas students and build collaborations.

“They won’t want to be pushed out of the city if Beijing wants to attract international students,” said Mike Gow, a postdoctoral fellow at New York University Shanghai.

Peking University, for example was proposing to use its most historic buildings, set in public parkland in the centre of Beijing, for an elite academy for international students.

Local Peking University students have already moved into residences on a satellite campus, and have been protesting against the controversial prestige project to convert the old buildings for privileged foreign students.

“A lot of these old campuses are very small and they are very central and they just don’t have the space and the facilities,” Gow said, adding that the most likely scenario was for undergraduates to be located to outlying campuses while many postgraduates stay in the centre of town.

But universities also want to improve their facilities. “That is probably where they are going to do the large-scale undergraduate teaching and also build new labs. It’s easier to build out there from scratch than to regenerate a city centre campus,” Gow said.