As China's economy transitions from high-speed growth to high-quality development, megacities must balance stable growth with transformation. In 2025, while continuing to relocate non-capital functions, Beijing achieved a gross domestic product of 5,207.34 billion yuan for the year, representing a 5.4% increase over the previous year calculated at constant prices. This milestone of exceeding 5 trillion yuan in economic output signifies a new pathway for megacity transformation under a context of controlled reduction. The focus is not merely on the scale itself, but on the shifting dynamics underpinning economic growth. How has Beijing managed to enhance its economic density while 'streamlining'? Where does the weight and novelty lie within this 5 trillion yuan economy, and what replicable experiences and insights does it offer for other megacities undergoing transformation?
New growth drivers have become a crucial pillar. Evaluating a '5 trillion yuan city' involves not just economic magnitude but also growth structure. In Beijing, new drivers are no longer supplementary but form a vital support for economic expansion, evidenced by two distinct growth trajectories. The first is a rising curve of continuous industrial structure upgrading. Data indicates that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, all ten of Beijing's high-precision and advanced industries reached scales of hundreds of billions of yuan, with sectors like new-generation information technology, scientific and technological services, and healthcare exceeding the trillion-yuan mark. At Xiaomi's automobile super factory in Beijing's Yizhuang area, the first model launched in March 2024, and the 500,000th vehicle rolled off the production line in November 2025, setting a new global record for mass production speed in the new energy vehicle sector. Further north, the Li Auto green intelligent factory and the BAIC's Xiangjie super factory have commenced operations. Their automated, green production lines, directed by 'smart brains,' illustrate the robust capabilities of 'Beijing Smart Manufacturing'. In 2025, Beijing's high-precision and advanced industries demonstrated steady progress. The combined value-added of industrial and information software sectors surpassed 1.8 trillion yuan, accounting for 35.2% of the city's GDP and contributing approximately 60% to its economic growth.
The second trajectory is an upward curve of increasing innovation density. In recent years, Beijing's intensity of research and development expenditure across society has remained consistently around 6%, placing it among the top innovative cities globally. On average, over 300 technology enterprises are established daily in the city, reflecting a high concentration of innovative elements. In artificial intelligence, Beijing's core strength is particularly notable: it accounts for over 40% of Chinese scholars listed among the world's top AI researchers; leads globally in the number of registered large models; and has seen a continuous emergence of innovative entities, including the 'first global large model listed company', the 'first AI chip company on the STAR Market', and the 'first domestic GPU listed company', collectively building a comprehensive ecosystem covering chips, models, and applications. In terms of industrial scale, Beijing's core AI industry is projected to reach 450 billion yuan in 2025, with more than 2,500 AI enterprises. AI is no longer confined to niche sectors but is rapidly permeating various social and economic domains. Beijing plans to leverage national industry pilot application bases to create more tangible, benchmark scenarios.
Beyond efficiency gains on the industrial side, stability and upgrading on the demand side provide another crucial foundation for Beijing's steady progress. Structurally, Beijing's consumption base is robust. Within 2025's household consumption expenditure, service consumption accounted for nearly 60%, while online retail sales constituted over 40% of total retail sales of consumer goods, indicating a stable economic foundation. Behind this steady consumption growth lie profound changes in consumption structure and scenarios. The deep integration of culture, commerce, tourism, sports, and exhibitions has become a new lever for high-quality development and a fresh catalyst for activating consumption vitality. The trend shows Beijing residents' consumption shifting from 'functional consumption' towards 'emotional value' and from 'single function' to 'composite function'. Consumption spaces are evolving from merely functional venues to multi-dimensional fields centered on experience. Events like performances, sports competitions, and exhibitions are becoming starting points that connect cultural, commercial, tourism, and social needs. Beijing possesses unique advantages for promoting this integrated development. As the world's only 'Dual Olympic City', it aggregates top-tier event resources that continuously energize the urban economy. With eight UNESCO World Heritage sites and numerous museums and cultural spaces, it provides a solid foundation for cultural and tourism integration. In recent years, a host of high-quality integrated scenarios have emerged, including 14 national-level nighttime cultural and tourism consumption clusters, 7 national-level tourism and leisure blocks, 30 industrial tourism demonstration sites, and the selection of Pinggu District's Jinhai Lake and Yanqing District's all-season ice and snow outdoor sports destination among the first batch of national high-quality outdoor sports destinations, collectively enriching the prospects for integrated development. Consumption supports citizens' quality of life in their daily routines while connecting to the strong pulse of the national economy. Through innovative models like 'ticket stub economy' and 'second viewing sites', Beijing is continuously enhancing consumption chains, effectively converting 'foot traffic' into 'lasting engagement'.
As internal development efficiency improves, new growth spaces extend to a broader regional scale. For Beijing, reaching the 5 trillion yuan milestone represents not only a phase in its own transformation but also a collective leap forward within the broader framework of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development. Recent years have seen this coordination deepen, with new progress in transport integration, joint ecological environment construction and protection, and industrial synergy. The accelerated development of the 'Rail-based Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei' region has facilitated smoother flow of regional factors and expanded Beijing's development space. Starting from 2025, Hebei buses began operating within Beijing for the first time. By the end of 2026, the Hongmiao to Pinggu section of Beijing Subway Line 22 is expected to be largely ready for operation, marking Beijing's first inter-provincial subway line extending into Hebei. This 'multi-directional convergence' in transport reflects Beijing's proactive stance in planning megacity development within the larger regional context.
Coordinated development is not merely simultaneous progress but involves forming synergies through division of labor and collaboration. Beijing is enhancing the radiating and driving role of its 'core' status, creating a coordinated pattern of complementary advantages and differentiated development with Tianjin and Hebei. Over five years, Beijing has persistently advanced the relocation of non-capital functions, phasing out over 594 general manufacturing enterprises, demolishing 120 million square meters of illegal constructions, and reclaiming 117 square kilometers of land. This 'subtraction' through streamlining has been exchanged for 'addition' in optimized economic structure and spatial layout. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the efficiency and proportion of regional transformation of scientific and technological achievements within Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei continuously improved. The value of technology contracts transferred from Beijing to Tianjin and Hebei grew from over 7 billion yuan in 2013 to over 99 billion yuan in 2025. The formulation and implementation of the 'Six Chains, Five Clusters' industrial map have turned industrial collaboration from a 'blueprint' into a 'tangible reality', further highlighting the region's role as a leading source of high-quality development momentum.
The fruits of coordinated development are increasingly tangible at the metropolitan circle level. A 1 to 1.5-hour transportation circle connecting major cities in the region has essentially formed. Cross-regional medical visits allow direct health insurance reimbursement, with comprehensive 'one-card access' achieved. The co-construction and sharing of public services continue to deepen, making the movement of people and factors more convenient and efficient. The aim of reforms is to enable the smooth flow of resources like technology, land, talent, and data, driven by market mechanisms, ultimately translating into tangible benefits for people's livelihoods. The coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei will focus on deepening advancement and collaborative construction, firmly grasping the strategic focus of relocating non-capital functions, strengthening the leading and supporting role of the 'one core, two wings' structure, accelerating the establishment of a modern capital metropolitan circle, jointly building the Beijing (Jing-Jin-Ji) International Science and Technology Innovation Center, comprehensively promoting collaborative innovation and industrial cooperation, and striving to further increase the region's economic aggregate as a proportion of the national total, thereby co-building a pioneering zone and demonstration area for Chinese modernization.