Those with some historical knowledge probably won’t be too unfamiliar with Zhangjiakou: it was the eastern port of the Jin merchants’ glory, the starting point of the Zhang (Zhangjiakou) – Kulun (Urga, i.e. Ulaanbaatar) route, once the authoritative pricing market for furs nationwide, once an important gateway of late-Qing lifelines, once the other endpoint of China’s first railway, the Jingzhang Railway, once the capital of the now-vanished Chahar Province.
Now it is one of the bottom three poorest cities in Hebei, with 10 of its 13 counties being state-level poverty counties — such a poverty ratio right next to the capital Beijing. Yet in the 1960s and 1970s it was still among the top three developed cities in Hebei, and at the beginning of liberation its GDP was on par with Guangzhou.
A city that retreats so greatly while the whole country races ahead — something must have happened. There are many reasons for a city’s backwardness, but for Zhangjiakou, bordering Beijing became the main reason constraining its development.
At the beginning of liberation the Chahar Province still existed; later the four northern provinces (Saibei) were abolished to form Inner Mongolia. In the first few years the seat of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was in Zhangjiakou. The central government probably didn’t want a Mongolian-centered city less than 200 km from the capital Beijing, and probably didn’t want the former seat of the puppet Mengjiang regime to evoke some inappropriate associations, so it moved to Hohhot.
In fact the Chahar tribe can be said to be the shared lord of the Mongols; Zhangjiakou’s Mongolian name, Kalgan, is still used internationally and in Russia and Eastern Europe, while the Suiyuan region (where Hohhot is) actually has more Han Chinese, and Tumd was more Sinicized than Chahar.
The split Chahar was divided between Inner Mongolia and Hebei, and later Yanqing was transferred from Zhangjiakou to Beijing. In Hebei, Zhangjiakou is like a stepchild: culturally incompatible — Zhangjiakou is the only purely Jin-language area in Hebei, in the same cultural circle as Inner Mongolia and Shanxi; geographically disconnected — from Zhangjiakou to any city in Hebei you must first go to Beijing by rail, and only in recent years was the Zhangshi (Shijiazhuang) expressway built, while the Zhangcheng (Chengde) expressway and the Zhangtang (Tangshan) railway are still under construction.
Yet such an outlier in Hebei, a poor city, has long been the city with the highest fiscal-tax-to-GDP ratio in Hebei. After Beijing grabbed the relatively well-off Yanqing in the 1950s, in recent years it has also coveted the also well-off Huailai.
Hebei is unwilling to let go, so Huailai stayed in Zhangjiakou. Actually, although Zhangjiakou is an outlier in Hebei, it still gets some care from the province.
Militarily, from Beijing’s northwest to the Mongolian border, basically only Zhangjiakou is a city of any scale; north of Zhangjiakou is the open Inner Mongolia Plateau with no natural defenses, so Zhangjiakou naturally took on the duty of guarding the capital. The scale of its garrison may be the largest among prefecture-level cities in China.
Especially after the Sino-Soviet split, this became the most militarized region. Whether as a once-prosperous trading port, the seat of Mengjiang, the capital of Chahar, or a city fostered as the CPC’s first city, it formed a substantial industrial and commercial base before and just after liberation; after the Sino-Soviet split these were forced to withdraw en masse.
Drawing the fire from under the cauldron wasn’t enough — they also closed the city off. After 1978, when the whole country was enthusiastically reforming and opening up, because of its high military sensitivity this place only opened up limitedly in 1995. For 17 years the spring wind didn’t cross the Juyong Pass; outside, earth-shaking changes had taken place, while Zhangjiakou didn’t know whether it was Han or Wei.
Since the reform and opening up, Zhangjiakou, which should have had its own opportunities, was forced to bear Beijing’s ever-growing burden of resources and environmental pressure. As Beijing’s upwind area and water source, this former military stronghold began, by order, to build a “capital green ecological barrier”.
To ensure Beijing’s water supply and clean water source, Zhangjiakou shut down many enterprises and strictly limited new ones; in the Bashang area, returning farmland to forest pushed 250,000 people back into poverty; the Yunzhou Reservoir diverted water to Beijing, turning paddy fields in Chicheng County into dry land; yet the Guanting Reservoir has long been off-limits to Zhangjiakou people, while Beijing’s power base, the Shalingzi (coal-fired) power plant, sits in Zhangjiakou, and Zhangjiakou itself often has power cuts to supply Beijing’s electricity.
“Block the sandstorm in Hebei, send the fresh breeze to the capital, send the clean water to the capital, keep the pollution in Hebei” — that is the true picture of Zhangjiakou.
Today, the environmental deterioration of Beijing and its surrounding areas — one must admit the primary cause is the macro-climate change, which may have sown the seeds of disaster back when trees were crazily cut during the Great Leap Forward’s steel campaign. But the recent rapid expansion of Beijing’s city size and the fragile ecological base of the small North China region, increasingly unable to sustain it, undoubtedly worsen the environmental deterioration.
Whether Beijing or Zhangjiakou, abandoning those high-energy-consumption, high-pollution enterprises is good. But know this: the amount of water Zhangjiakou sends to Beijing each year, if used to develop its local economy, would be more than enough; Zhangjiakou shouldn’t be this poor.
Beijing shutting down enterprises costs its economic scale nothing, but massively limiting the number of enterprises (not only polluting ones) is crippling for Zhangjiakou. Zhangjiakou, to support Beijing, has to struggle between economic growth and environmental protection; and today who can deny that most Chinese cities’ development comes at the expense of environment and resources?!
It can be said that poor Zhangjiakou was forced onto a high-end, stylish environmental path. Our water, our farmland, our shut-down enterprises — all were support given free to the capital Beijing. Where is the promised market economy?
Fortunately, environmental protection has had some effect. In the past year, Zhangjiakou finally ranked near the top in air quality across North China and even north of the Yangtze, precisely because it is poor and only has good mountains, water, and air left. Yet outsiders still say the whole Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is heavily polluted, intentionally or unintentionally ignoring Zhangjiakou’s, especially the Bashang area’s, excellent air quality.
In the 1998 Zhangbei and Shangyi earthquake, the noon news reported Beijing’s safety first thing; not a word on whether Zhangjiakou people lived or died. That earthquake happened in January, with nighttime temperatures below -30°C, killing 49 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. That is Beijing and Beijingers’ understanding of Zhangjiakou — no malice, but rest assured, the concept of Zhangjiakou isn’t in their minds either; they don’t know there is a neighbor who has silently given to Beijing for decades, and they don’t know that there people stand by the river and pee, and still have to drink it.
Zhangjiakou years ago brewed a bid for the Winter Olympics; at the time it seemed to be for 2018. I also think Zhangjiakou is overreaching — so poor yet bidding for the Olympics.
But you should know: Olympic funding and organization are state-funded and organized, plus commercial sponsorship. Probably no single city has the dedicated strength to host something this big.
So the question is, why didn’t the state support Beijing to host alone this time? Or why didn’t the state heavily fund Zhangjiakou to host alone? Or why didn’t Beijing pull in Tianjin to host? Why did Beijing pull in Zhangjiakou?
Actually it’s because Zhangjiakou, having nothing else to develop in recent years, finally developed tourism, racking its brains to come up with a few decent highlights, one of which is Chongli County’s skiing. After more than ten years of development, Zhangjiakou’s skiing project has a certain foundation.
It’s because Zhangjiakou has snow, quality ski resorts, that Beijing thought of having ice, making this joint Winter Olympics bid possible. After all, ice events can be indoors (theoretically any city can host them), but snow events can’t.
The second question needs little explanation — the state indeed has no reason to support Zhangjiakou alone; if Zhangjiakou hosted alone, they might as well pick a northeastern city with a snow foundation.
Many northeastern friends are excited, but there’s no need; Zhangjiakou really has no strength to compete with you — giving up the Winter Olympics bid years ago proves the point.
But Beijing wants to compete with you; Beijing likes to take everything into its own hands. As the capital it likes to put all the good things in its own home. Beijing had no conditions for the Winter Olympics, but with no conditions it creates them — and Zhangjiakou is the ready-made “condition” Beijing found this time.
The third question needs little explanation either — Beijing and Tianjin can’t keep snow.
This Winter Olympics bid gives Zhangjiakou a feeling of being re-recognized, plus the start of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou intercity railway; the next 10 years may be a good opportunity for Zhangjiakou’s city marketing. As a native, I should be a bit happy.
But for some reason, what appears in my mind is the various histories and realities of Zhangjiakou sacrificing for Beijing, the scene of shops closing before the 2008 Olympics to keep Beijing safe, the worried faces of farmers in Chicheng County with no water to irrigate their crops, the scenes of countless Zhangjiakou people leaving their homes.
One can imagine that in the next few years Zhangjiakou will see all kinds of demolition and land acquisition, all kinds of construction. Maybe many lovely citizens of our poor mountain valley will feel honored that the city is developing. But I have a vague worry. Zhangjiakou’s urban area is surrounded by mountains on three sides with little space, so all kinds of land will be fiercely contested. I pray there will be no, or few, bloody forced-demolition cases.
Chongli’s forests are large tracts of primeval birch forest, rarely visited and well conserved ecologically. My friends and I once played among them. I pray they leave us more forest and don’t cut it all down to build an Olympic village.
I also naively pray that such a games will bring some real benefit to Zhangjiakou’s people, rather than disrupting our lives and adding to our burden.
I pray even more naively that the leaders here will truly use this as an opportunity to seek welfare for the citizens, rather than only seeking political credit for themselves, impoverishing Zhangjiakou and paving their own path to promotion.