At a plenary session of its Party committee on Saturday, Beijing announced that it would speed up the construction of a "subsidiary administrative center".

The announcement was made as the city's authorities convened the session to study and implement a guideline passed by the Central authorities on promoting the integration of Beijing with neighboring Tianjin municipality and Hebei province. As an important move to fulfill the national strategy and relocate non-capital functions from densely-populated Beijing, the "subsidiary administrative center" would be "focused" on Tongzhou, a suburban district to the southeast and its construction must have "remarkable progress" by 2017.

According to the integrated development strategy, Beijing, whose population stood at 21.5 million in 2014, must stick to its population control target of 23 million people by 2020. The Chinese capital has been seeking to address its urban woes, such as traffic congestion and air pollution by curbing its rapid population growth and moving some facilities to nearby regions. Over the past year, a number of wholesale markets in Beijing's downtown areas have been shut down or relocated.

To relocate non-capital functions out of Beijing and promote the integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei will further activate the vitality of the three regions and boost their sustainable development as a whole.