The New Times: 

In recent years, urban renewal has gained significant attention across various regions, with many cities trending on social media due to their enhanced aesthetics and post-renewal charm. Could you share some successful experiences in urban renewal? What initiatives are planned next? Thank you.

Ni Hong: 

Urban renewal is an inevitable process in the development of cities. Existing buildings now far exceed new buildings. Therefore, maintaining the functionality and utility of these existing buildings through urban renewal is essential. Moreover, this process requires comprehensive reforms spanning planning, construction and management. Mr. Qin oversees this area, so I would like to invite him to answer this question.

Qin Haixiang: 

Thank you. Urban renewal operations are of great concern to us all. Implementing these actions is crucial for transforming urban development models and achieving high-quality development. This initiative was decisively outlined during the fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee. Over recent years, we have consistently applied a two-pronged approach of addressing both issues and objectives: deploying policies, initiating pilot projects, and managing key efforts to solidly advance urban renewal nationwide. These efforts have yielded substantial results.

Allow me to briefly introduce some of the main tasks being undertaken in our urban renewal initiatives:

First, we have made a big push to renovate old urban residential compounds. This is an important part of urban renewal initiatives. In recent years, we have focused on serving the people, delivering convenience and security. We have launched three campaigns to improve residential conditions and living environments, namely, "corridor revolution," "environmental revolution" and "management revolution," which have achieved positive results. Since 2019, China has started the renovation of 258,800 old urban residential compounds, benefiting 44.34 million households and around 110 million residents. During this process, we have upgraded 326,000 kilometers of old pipelines for water, electricity, gas and heating, have installed 125,000 elevators and have added 72,700 community service facilities for elderly and child care. At the same time, we have implemented energy-saving renovations to 423 million square meters of buildings and have added 3.6 million parking spaces, 117,000 electric vehicle charging piles, 755,000 e-bike charging piles as well as over 28 million square meters of cultural, recreational and sports venues. While renovating old residential compounds, we have focused on small-scale projects to enhance people's overall wellbeing. Continuous efforts have been made to boost the construction of parks, green spaces and sports facilities near residential areas, including over 40,000 pocket parks and more than 100,000 kilometers of urban green paths. A total of 11,000 hectares of lawn has opened to the public in 6,100 parks, providing citizens with a greater connection to nature and more opportunities for outdoor activities and sports, making our cities more livable.

Second, we have accelerated the upgrading of urban underground pipelines. These initiatives are crucial for enhancing our cities' resilience and safeguarding people's lives and property. In recent years, we have guided localities to upgrade about 100,000 kilometers of pipelines for gas and water supply as well as sewage. Along with the upgrading, we have implemented urban lifeline safety projects by installing intelligent sensing devices to improve our capabilities for monitoring the safety of urban pipelines and bridges as well as conducting early warnings. These efforts have eliminated many security risks and shifted the infrastructure risk control method from passive response to proactive prevention, making our cities more resilient.

Third, we have been actively promoting the construction of smart cities. This is an essential requirement for modern urban development and governance. In recent years, we have strengthened coordination and increased efforts to build a city information modeling platform and an urban operation management service platform. These efforts have enhanced precise and scientific urban management and have promoted new urban infrastructure construction based on digital, internet-based and smart-tech development, making our cities smarter.

Of course, implementing urban renewal initiatives is a long-term task. For the next step, we will earnestly implement the decisions and requirements from the 20th CPC National Congress and the third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee. Guided by the principle that cities should be built by the people and for the people, we will establish a sustainable urban renewal model and policy regulations to create livable, resilient and smart cities. This is an important reform task outlined at the third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee. Guided by scientific principles, the laws of nature and the reality, we will work to pursue high-quality implementation of urban renewal initiatives. 

Our approach to urban renewal involves three key mechanisms: First, we will create and improve new institutions and mechanisms for urban renewal, which will be demand oriented and project based. Currently we are at a stage of upgrading existing resources, which with diverse participants and demands have brought great changes. We should pursue improved existing resources, a more complete range of functions and higher quality in light of actual demands. Second, we will carry out "physical examinations" for cities before urban renewal actions. We will establish and improve a working mechanism to implement "urban physical examinations" and urban renewal initiatives in a holistic way. Particularly, we should take the problems found through these "examinations" as the focus of urban renewal to solve pressing problems that impact people the most as well as shortcomings and weak links that affect cities' competitiveness, carrying capacity, security and sustainable development. Third, we will establish a policy coordination mechanism. We will improve relevant supporting policies in finance, taxation, land use and other fields, encourage the participation of private capital and create new models for urban renewal investment and financing.

Specifically, we will systematically promote the development of good houses, good residential compounds, good communities and good urban districts. Mr. Ni just made an introduction in this regard. We will focus on the following areas:

First, we will continue efforts to renovate old urban residential compounds and resolve problems such as installing elevators, parking shortages and charging difficulties. This year our plan is to renovate more than 50,000 old residential compounds. Based on this, a number of complete communities will be built as well as old blocks and old factory areas will be restored.

Second, we will constantly upgrade cities' "inner" constructions, mainly focusing on underground pipelines and cables. The third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee made decisions and arrangements for strengthening the building of underground utility tunnels and the upgrading of old pipelines. This year, old pipelines with a total length of over 100,000 km are scheduled to be upgraded.

Third, we will vigorously promote the construction of safety projects regarded as lifeblood within cities. We will use digital measures to advance real-time monitoring on various public facilities including water supply, drainage, gas, heating, bridge and utility tunnels. In doing so, early detection, early warning and early disposal of security hazards will guarantee the safe operation of our cities.

Fourth, we will promote urban waterlogging control and have plans to remove the risk of flooding and waterlogging at more than 1,000 highly vulnerable points in 100 cities this year. We will accelerate the systematic construction of urban drainage and waterlogging prevention, and coordinate urban flood and waterlogging controls. An integrated operation and management mode, covering cities' water systems, drainage networks, and surrounding rivers, lakes, seas and reservoirs, will be set up and improved to make cities more capable for flood prevention and more resilient for safe operation. Thank you.