Every Day is an Overpopulation Party in Crowded Beijing

Throwback Thursday takes a look back into Beijing's past, using our nine-year-strong blog archives as the source for a glance at the weird and wonderful of yesteryear.

This month nine years ago, Beijing’s population breached what now seems like the measly figure of 16 million residents. Sixteen million you say – pah! – the population now sits closer to 22 million, twice what it was in 1990, an increase equivalent to the population of the entire city-island of Singapore breaking off its peninsula and landing in our smoggy midst.

The drastic explosion in population is the result of immigrants flocking to Beijing for work (approximately 8 million of the city's residents are holders of temporary residence permits), not excessive amounts of unadulterated hanky panky, as proven by the city’s low birth rate of 8.93 births per thousand people per year (compared to the global average of 18.6 per thousand people in 2016).

The government has been concerned about Beijing’s growth for some time now, most recently announcing that it would take steps to cap the population at 23 million by 2020, as part of the latest Five Year Plan. That figure means reducing the populations of Beijing’s six downtown districts by 15 percent.

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Photo: sputniknews.com

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