In April 2017 the central leadership announced Xiongan New Area, a planned city about 100 kilometres southwest of Beijing intended to absorb "non-capital" functions, universities and state firms and to relieve the congested capital. Designated a state-level new area of national significance, it is conceived as a low-carbon, innovation-oriented, digitally instrumented model city built largely from scratch. Construction has proceeded under tight central direction, with a high-speed link to Beijing. It is the flagship of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordination strategy.
Xiongan is the signature top-down new-city megaproject of the Xi era, designed as a showcase of ecological and smart urbanism.
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