Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping reinvigorates his Xiong’an New Area project, the latest military purge appears to target scientists, and the Iran war gives a boost to Chinese green technology.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping reinvigorates his Xiong’an New Area project, the latest military purge appears to target scientists, and the Iran war gives a boost to Chinese green technology.

Xi Renews Push to Develop Xiong’an

On Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Xiong’an New Area and called for greater efforts to develop the planned metropolis, located some 62 miles from Beijing. Xi conceived Xiong’an more than a decade ago to reduce administrative stress in the capital, but these plans have yet to come to fruition.

The project will relocate some state-owned enterprises, as well as administration of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolis, to the new city while keeping central government authority in the capital. The goal is for Xiong’an to host a population of 5 million people by 2035; the area currently has roughly 1.2 million residents.

Xi’s visit appears intended to reinvigorate the project, where construction began in 2017 and is behind schedule. When I visited Xiong’an in 2018, it had little more than a local government office and a handful of residential high-rises. It has grown in the years since but is nowhere near its targets, due in part to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier proposals envisioned expanding nearby Baoding into a regional administrative hub, which would have made sense given that city’s historical importance as the capital of Hebei until 1968. But creating a new city in........

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