Commission set up to study ways to slow population growth of Beijing

A target was set to keep the population of Beijing, the capital city of China, under 18 million by the year 2020. In 2009, the population surpassed that number by a million. The size of the population is causing problems in supplying necessities of life to the 19 million people living in the city. This includes difficulty in supplying utilities such as water, electricity, gasoline and coal. According to data from China, Beijing has a water supply of 2.6 billion cubic meters however; the city population is currently consuming 3.6 billion cubic meters of water annually. The additional water supply has had to come from reservoirs, groundwater and emergency water resources. Public transport and city transportation is also impacted by the size of the population in Beijing. Traffic congestion is a daily problem. Waste management in the city is also a problem, with the 18,300 tons of daily waste being 50% more than the capacity of the city’s waste disposal system. Officials from the Beijing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference have recommended that a commission be set up to study the population problem and to come up with population policies to deal with it. (February 24, 2011)