--FILE--Cityscape of Tongzhou District in Beijing, China, 12 May 2015. Beijing plans to move its municipal government away from the city center in a bid to ease congestion, the official Xinhua news agency reported Sunday (12 July 2015). The long-rumored plan was confirmed in a guideline issued by city authorities over the weekend. It calls for "remarkable progress" by 2017 on the construction of a "subsidiary administrative center" located in Tongzhou, an eastern suburb of Beijing that is home to one million residents. Officials say they will seek to cap the city's population at 23 million by 2020, Xinhua reported. Beijing is currently home to 21.5 million residents. Beijing has seen 17 straight years of population growth, fuelled by migrants, many from rural areas, seeking better employment opportunities. The Chinese capital added 368, 000 new residents in 2014. The move is part of a broader plan to relieve the "urban diseases" of traffic and overcrowding within the city's downtown areas and better integrate Beijing with neighboring Tianjin city and Hebei province, Xinhua said.
