(Yicai Global) Dec. 7 -- Beijing plans to invest more than CNY1 trillion (USD145 billion) in its new administrative city center, a quiet eastern suburb it plans to transform into a city twice the size of Manhattan.

The spending will come over the next three years and go into over 1,000 projects, Mayor Zhao Lei of the target Tongzhou district said at the 2018 Global Wealth Management Forum on Dec. 1. Those tasks will be focused on infrastructure, urban management, public services and the environment.

"The area of Tongzhou district is 906 square kilometers, including 155 square kilometers for the sub-center," Lei said. "We expect to invest several trillion yuan before construction is complete in 2035."

Manhattan, the renowned bustling city district of New York, spans around 87 square kilometers.

The local government has been planning the new admin center since 2012, in the hopes that it will allow for better urban design, curb pollution and disease and promote stronger development ties between the capital and its neighboring Tianjin municipality and Hebei province. The three combine to be known as Jingjinji, the biggest urbanized area in northern China with a collective gross domestic product of USD1.2 trillion in 2017.

Moving In

Several government agencies have already made the move into Tongzhou, including the Beijing Municipal Poverty Alleviation and Support Office and the Beijing Municipal Secrecy Bureau, which settled there on Nov. 30. The second batch of departments will start moving in at the end of this month, staff at one of them told Yicai Global.

That puts the city's plans right on line with the schedule put forward by the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission, which had aimed to have the first phase of the new Tongzhou area finished in the second half of this year.

The next steps will be to get more infrastructure up and running, such as a high school affiliated with the Renmin University of China -- one of the country's top three, and then to publish plans for Tongzhou's integration into XIanghe, Gu'an and Dachang, three counties in the north of Hebei province.

Editor: James Boynton