China To Make Cities Safer

China on Sunday unveiled a guideline to push for the safe development of cities, as some major accidents in cities caused great casualties and property loss in recent years. The country must uphold the vision of making development people-centered and never seek development at the cost of safety, according to the guideline made public by the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council. By 2020, China aims to achieve “noticeable progress” in safe urban development, and create a number of demonstration cities in line with the objectives for becoming a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the guideline said.

By 2035, the country should put in place an improved system for safe urban development and create safe cities that are in line with the requirements for basically realising socialist modernisation, it added. China must continuously push forward the formation of a systematic and modernised mechanism to ensure urban safety, and step up building safely-developing cities on the foundation of central districts to lead the development of neighboring areas and bring benefits to the people, it said.

With the acceleration of China’s urbanisation, the population, functions and sizes of Chinese cities have been expanding rapidly, but safety hazards are also on the rise as cities become more complicated.

At the end of 2016, the ratio of permanent urban residents to total population stood at 57.35 per cent, up from 52.57 per cent at the end of 2012, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. The country must raise the capability of ensuring urban safety and prevent major accidents to create a sound environment for people’s lives and work, according to the guideline.