Month: August 2008

Beijing 北京 Peking
Capital city and municipality
Municipality of Beijing
Beijing central business district with the China Zun (center) Forbidden City Temple of Heaven Great Wall of Badaling Tiananmen Great Hall of the People (left) and National Centre for the Performing Arts (right)
Location of Beijing Municipality within China
Coordinates (Tian'anmen Square national flag): 39°54′24″N 116°23′51″E / 39.90667°N 116.39750°E / 39.90667; 116.39750
Country	China
Established	1045 BC
Founded by	Zhou dynasty (Western Zhou)
Municipal seat	Tongzhou District
Divisions  - County-level  - Township- level	16 districts 343 towns and subdistricts
Government
• Type	Municipality
• Body	Beijing Municipal People's Congress
• CCP Secretary	Yin Li
• Congress Chairman	Li Xiuling
• Mayor	Yin Yong
• CPPCC Chairman	Wei Xiaodong
• National People's Congress Representation	53 deputies
Area [1]
• Municipality	16,410.54 km2 (6,336.14 sq mi)
• Land	16,410.54 km2 (6,336.14 sq mi)
• Urban	16,410.54 km2 (6,336.14 sq mi)
• Metro	12,796.5 km2 (4,940.8 sq mi)
Elevation	43.5 m (142.7 ft)
Highest elevation (Mount Ling)	2,303 m (7,556 ft)
Population  (2020 census)[2]
• Municipality	21,893,095
• Density	1,300/km2 (3,500/sq mi)
• Urban	21,893,095
• Urban density	1,300/km2 (3,500/sq mi)
• Metro	22,366,547
• Metro density	1,700/km2 (4,500/sq mi)
• Ranks in China	Population: 27th; Density: 4th
Major ethnic groups
• Han	95%
GDP (2023)[3]
• Total	CN¥ 4,376 billion (13th) US$ 621 billion
• Per capita	CN¥ 200,273 (1st) US$ 28,421
Time zone	UTC+08:00 (CST)
Postal codes	100000–102629
Area code	10
ISO 3166 code	CN-BJ
– Growth	0.7%
License plate prefixes	京A, C, E, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q 京B (taxis) 京G, Y (outside urban area) 京O, D (police and authorities)
Abbreviation	BJ / 京 (jīng)
HDI (2021)	0.907[4] (1st) – very high
Website	beijing.gov.cn english.beijing.gov.cn
Symbols
Flower	China rose (Rosa chinensis) Chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium)
Tree	Chinese arborvitae (Platycladus orientalis) Pagoda tree (Styphnolobium japonicum)

Beijing
"Beijing" in regular Chinese characters
Chinese	北京
Hanyu Pinyin	Běijīng
Postal	Peking[note 1] Peiping (1368–1403; 1928–1937; 1945–1949)
Literal meaning	"Northern Capital"
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Běijīng Bopomofo ㄅㄟˇ   ㄐㄧㄥ Gwoyeu Romatzyh Beeijing Wade–Giles Pei3-ching1 Tongyong Pinyin Běijing IPA [pèɪ.tɕíŋ] ⓘ Wu Suzhounese Poh-cin Hakka Romanization Bet5-gin1 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Bākgīng Jyutping bak1 ging1 IPA [pɐk̚˥ keŋ˥] Southern Min Hokkien POJ Pak-kiaⁿ Tâi-lô Pak-kiann Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC Báe̤k-gĭng

Beijing,^[a] previously romanized as Peking,^[b] is the capital of China. With more than 22 million residents,^[9] Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city as well as China's second largest city after Shanghai.^[10] It is located in Northern China, and is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of the State Council with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts.^[11] Beijing is mostly surrounded by Hebei Province with the exception of neighboring Tianjin to the southeast; together, the three divisions form the Jingjinji megalopolis and the national capital region of China.^[12]

Beijing is a global city and one of the world's leading centres for culture, diplomacy, politics, finance, business and economics, education, research, language, tourism, media, sport, science and technology and transportation and art. It is home to the headquarters of most of China's largest state-owned companies and houses the largest number of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world, as well as the world's four biggest financial institutions by total assets.^[13] It is also a major hub for the national highway, expressway, railway, and high-speed rail networks. For a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Beijing Capital International Airport was Asia's busiest airport (2009–2019) and the second busiest airport in the world (2010–2019).^[14] In 2020, the Beijing subway was the fourth busiest and second longest in the world.^[15] The Beijing Daxing International Airport, Beijing's second international airport, is the largest single-structure airport terminal in the world.^[16][17]

Combining both modern and traditional style architectures, with one side of the city being modernized and renovated to fit the times, and the other half still offering traditional hutong districts.^[18] Beijing is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a rich history dating back over three millennia. As the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political center of the country for most of the past eight centuries,^[19] and was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium CE.^[20] With mountains surrounding the inland city on three sides, in addition to the old inner and outer city walls, Beijing was strategically poised and developed to be the residence of the emperor and thus was the perfect location for the imperial capital. The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates.^[21] Beijing is one of the most important tourist destinations of the world. In 2018, Beijing was the second highest earning tourist city in the world after Shanghai.^[22] Beijing is home to many national monuments and museums and has seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites—the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Ming Tombs, Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site, and parts of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal—all of which are popular tourist locations.^[23] Siheyuans, the city's traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing.

Beijing's public universities make up more than one-fifth of Double First-Class Construction universities, and many of them consistently rank among the best in the Asia-Pacific and the world.^[24][25][26] Beijing is home to the two best C9 League universities (Tsinghua and Peking) in Asia & Oceania region and emerging countries.^[27][28] Beijing CBD is a center for Beijing's economic expansion, with the ongoing or recently completed construction of multiple skyscrapers. Beijing's Zhongguancun area is a world leading center of scientific and technological innovation as well as entrepreneurship. Beijing has been ranked the city with the largest scientific research output by the Nature Index since the list's inception in 2016.^[29][30] The city has hosted numerous international and national sporting events, the most notable being the 2008 Summer Olympics and 2008 Summer Paralympics Games. In 2022, Beijing became the first city ever to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics,^[31] and also the Summer and Winter Paralympics.^[32] Beijing hosts 175 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many organizations, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Silk Road Fund, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the Central Academy of Drama, the Central Conservatory of Music, and the Red Cross Society of China.

Etymology[edit]

Over the past 3,000 years, the city of Beijing has had numerous other names. The name Beijing, which means "Northern Capital" (from the Chinese characters 北 běi for north and 京 jīng for capital), was applied to the city in 1403 during the Ming dynasty to distinguish the city from Nanjing (the "Southern Capital").^[33] The English spelling Beijing is based on the government's official romanization (adopted in the 1980s) of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin. An older English spelling, Peking, was used by Jesuit missionary Martino Martini in a popular atlas published in Amsterdam in 1655.^[34] Although Peking is no longer the common name for the city, some of the city's older locations and facilities, such as Beijing Capital International Airport