A construction scene at Xiongan New Area (XINHUA)

---

 

Last May, the center of Sun Ziren’s life moved more than 800 kilometers southward to the Xiongan New Area. Before that, he was working in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, as the chief economist of the Northeast Company of the China Construction Second Engineering Bureau. The headquarters dispatched him to the Xiongan Company located near the road known as the hub of a great number of state-owned enterprises (SOE) in the new area’s Rongcheng County.

Around 30 percent of SOEs had established offices on Aowei Road by the time Sun arrived and more would follow over the next six months. As time passed, SOEs started to settle along the nearby Rongmei Road as Aowei Road became too crowded to accommodate other companies.

Rongcheng County was home to thousands of clothing companies of varying size. After the launch of the new area in April 2017, some SOEs chose to start their business here. Therefore, people may see two name cards at the gate of some factories, one for a clothing factory and the other for an SOE. The coexistence of two different businesses is a testament to the ongoing transition period and the unique scene taking shape in Xiongan New Area.

Born in 1983, Sun has been working in architecture for 12 years. He made frequent business trips to Hebei Province, where the new area is situated, when he was a salesman. However, it never occurred to him that in the future, he would someday call this place home. Like many others, Sun had no idea why his company selected him to go to Xiongan. The new area was better than Sun had imagined and he felt a burst of excitement about developing this place after staying in cities for a long time. “Not everyone has the opportunity to work here,” he said.

Sun successfully dealt with the lack of mechanism, because he had gone through similar difficulties in his early career. He set up a system of business management and optimized it with specific terms within two years after the Northeast bureau was established in 2013. He also investigated the complete market structure when he started to engage in marketing three years later. Sun believed that the construction of the new area is a process of creating many things out of nothing.

Sun is among Xiongan’s first batch of builders whose average age is no more than 40 years old. Like him, many SOE workers born in the 1980s were dispatched to develop the new area.

The construction of Xiongan Citizen Service Center, the first architecture project in the new area, started in November 2017. Four companies jointly won its bid, including Zhonghai Property Group Co., Ltd. and three affiliated enterprises of China State Construction Engineering Corporation responsible for construction, design and investment. In terms of the contract, they were required to build a series of buildings on a piece of land as large as about 240,000 square meters to serve such functions as governmental services, planning exhibition and business services. The construction team only spent 1,000 hours in completing the main structure of these buildings due to its advanced technology and adequate personnel. The local people in Xiongan were the witness to such efficient SOE performance.

Expansion of business requires active efforts in the new area. Wang Zhibo, an employee of Xiongan company of State Grid Corporation of China, used to wait for customers to come to the office without spending much time searching business for opportunities on their own. However, things have changed. The energy project of Citizen Service Center is the result of their hard work. “We might not have won the project if we hadn’t actively started the negotiation,” Wang said. The market in Xiongan is huge. In many cases, the collaboration among enterprises is more crucial.

Last year, Hebei Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resource Exploration needed to install electricity when its staff were conducting a geological survey in the new area. In the past, they had to apply for services in electricity supply companies. This time, Wang’s company sent workers to the survey site after hearing it and the workers finished the application procedure right there.

Some young SOE employees have become eager to learn more since coming to Xiongan. The State Grid Corporation of China revealed that it would innovate strategic business in the new area, such as intelligent grid, and promote research and development by adopting advanced and new technologies. Wang had barely heard about expressions like SPV, DBOT or flywheel energy storage despite having worked in the domain for more than a decade. “We may fail to keep pace with the development of Xiongan if we can’t study hard,” Wan said.

Wang’s company holds two exchange meetings each week in which everyone shares with colleagues what they have recently learned in terms of grid technologies and management pattern, so that individual experience could be turned into collective wisdom. It established 15 research groups to tackle the existing problems with grid planning and construction by integrating various resources.

The construction of Xiongan New Area keeps these young people away from their families. Sun’s son was only 6 months old when he left for the new area. He considers himself a migrant who has recently settled in Xiongan and may consider bringing his family members as well. Sun cherishes the experience of being part of Xiongan’s construction because it is the most valuable treasure of young men like him.

 

The article was edited and translated from China Youth Daily.

(edited by MA YUHONG)