Recently, the Medium- and Long-Term Population Development Plan of Wenzhou (hereinafter referred to as the Plan) was released. By 2025, Wenzhou will strive for increasing its permanent resident population to 10 million, make the total number of high-skilled talent reach 400,000 and introduce 600,000 college graduates; the proportion of high-skilled talents in skilled workers will reach 30%; the population will be better distributed; and the urbanization rate of the city’s permanent population will reach 75%. By 2030, the status of “a city with a permanent resident population of 10 million” will be further consolidated.

The population has become the paramount strategic resource for urban development. According to the Seventh Census, taken in 2020, the permanent resident population of Wenzhou had reached 9.5729 million, ranking second only to Hangzhou in the province. The city’s overall population base is still relatively large, providing a quantitative basis for stimulating population growth in the later period. Besides, in recent years, the city’s population quality has been continuously ameliorated, its level of urbanization has increased modestly, and the labor productivity of all employees has been steadily improved.

In September 2020, Wenzhou issued the Several Opinions on Building a City with a Permanent Resident Population of 10 million, formally putting forward the strategy of building a city with 10 million permanent residents. This year, during the 13th Wenzhou Prefectural Congress of the Communist Party of China and the city’s two sessions (the First Session of the 14th Wenzhou Municipal People’s Congress and the First Session of the 12th Wenzhou Municipal People’s Political Consultative Conference), the goal of achieving a permanent population of 10 million at the end of the “14th Five-Year Plan” was further emphasized. In order to effectively expand the population size, optimize the population structure, improve the population quality, and promote the long-term balanced development of Wenzhou’s population, the city has formulated and unveiled the Plan.

As a programmatic document guiding the city’s population development, the Plan will also become an important basis for Wenzhou to formulate population development policies, implement population management and carry out population services. The Plan highlights full coverage, focusing on public services for the whole life cycle and management services for the whole population with integrated planning of fertility, parenting, education, employment and old-age care, common services for household-registered and floating populations, collaborative introduction and cultivation of high-end scientific research talent, ordinarily skilled talent and frontline employees, and support for all the labor force, the youth, women, children, the elderly, the disabled and the disadvantaged groups. At the same time, the Plan foregrounds innovation, proposing many tasks to explore and improve relevant institutional mechanisms and innovate work patterns, such as exploring and improving the identification standards of special outstanding talent, upgrading the “education brain +” system through digital reform, refining the new residence permit system, building a big data platform for population information and management, and carrying out annual evaluation and analysis of population development.

Enhancing urban function

Reinforcing population size supporting system

According to the Plan, Wenzhou will further enhance urban function and expand urban population carrying capacity through improving the function of its industrial platform, launching a series of enterprise introduction and cultivation actions, activating the all-for-one potential of various brand activities, optimizing the business environment, and accelerating the construction of major transportation hubs.

On the one hand, the construction of the industrial platform will be consolidated to well attract talents via the platform. Wenzhou will accelerate the construction of development zones (parks), “10,000 mu and 100 billion” new industrial platforms, characteristic towns, and industrial platform systems for small and micro parks, with well-distributed functions, clear leading industries, intensive and efficient resources, and dislocation competition of features to refine and guide the layout of industrial clusters step by step. The city will build the Wenzhou Bay New Area at a high level, devote greater energy to building “two areas and two highlands” including the national demonstration area for high-quality development of the private economy, the highland for advanced manufacturing in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), the Zhejiang southeast coastal science and technology innovation highland and the Wenzhou metropolitan new area for the integration of industries and the city, and integrate and upgrade 14 high-functional industrial platforms.

On the other hand, the urban regional function will be enhanced to realize the locational attraction for and introduction of talent. The city aims to well construct the south gate of the YRD, deepen the strategic cooperation with Jiading and Songjiang Districts in Shanghai as well as other places, accelerate the construction of a number of sci-tech innovation enclaves such as the Wenzhou (Jiading) Sci-Tech Innovation Park Phase II, the Wenzhou (Songjiang) Sci-Tech Innovation Park, and the Wenzhou (Binjiang) Sci-Tech Innovation Park, strengthen the cooperation with Hangzhou on the digital economy, Ningbo on sci-tech innovation, and Taizhou on the private economy. The city will actively integrate into the construction of the Guangdong-Fujian-Zhejiang coastal city cluster, cooperate with Ningde to promote the coordinated development of the Zhejiang-Fujian border, and expand the cooperation path with Fuzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities; and will deepen the construction of the Zhejiang-Anhui-Fujian-Jiangxi National Eco-Tourism Cooperation Zone and integrate into the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt with high quality.

At the same time, the city will speed up the internal training and external introduction of enterprises to attract talents to ideal positions, strengthen the organization of major events to attract talents to characteristic brands, properly build a business environment to attract talents to a favorable environment, and expedite the construction of key hubs to attract talents to convenient transportation.

Guiding resource agglomeration

Optimizing the spatial distribution system of population

The Plan proposes to deepen the reform of urban-rural integration, priorly promote the congregation of rural population to cities and towns, guide the concentration of element resources of innovation and entrepreneurship to the city proper, focus on the improvement of the primacy of the city proper, establish two population agglomeration centers including one main center of the metropolitan area and one municipal sub-center (“one main and one sub”), build a youth development-oriented city, and create a modern river-embracing and coastal garden city.

In terms of the new-type urbanization construction (NUC), the city will give full play to the demonstration role of NUC in Yueqing and Longgang, learn from Yueqing’s experience of NUC of supplementing and strengthening the weak points, and improve the level of equalization of public services, digitalization of government services and refinement of grass-roots governance in counties (cities, districts) according to local conditions; will bolster the deepening reform of Longgang, establish the source of new urbanization reform in China, support the comprehensive pilot project of the urban standardization of Longgang in forming local standards, and upgrade them to provincial standards and even national standards; and will advance the high-quality development of small city cultivation pilots, reinforce the guidance of “one town, one policy” according to the classification of “strengthening, accelerating and refining” to establish a batch of small city cultivation pilots, and strive to achieve the leap-forward development of “towns” to “cities”.

At the same time, “one main and one sub” population agglomeration centers will be constructed. The city will highlight the urban layout of “one axis, one belt and one district” to build the Oujiang New Town with key areas including the Binjiang Business District and both banks of Oujiang River in the Development Axis along the Oujiang River, support Yueqing and Rui’an in establishing Wenzhou’s Northern and Southern New Districts, stimulate the development of river-embracing and agglomeration in Feiyun River and Aojiang River basins, accelerate the development of the integration of Yueqing, the Oujiang Estuary and Dongtou, of the Wenzhou-Rui’an Plain, and of Longgang, Pingyang and Cangnan to comprehensively form a coordinated and integrated development pattern.

The city will actively promote the expansion and upgrading of the central urban area, enlarge and strengthen the main population center of the city, bolster the “six integrations” such as the integrations of spatial planning and public facilities, and create a fascinating city brand of “one core and ten major areas” with high standards; and will optimize and strengthen the construction of the municipal population sub-center formed by the integrated development of Longgang, Pingyang and Cangnan, reinforce the supporting of public services, deepen the integration of industries and of industries and cities, and speed up the transformation from county economy to urban economy.

Strengthening childcare services

Establishing a parenting-friendly service system

The Plan also makes clear the implementation of various fertility support policies to create a brand of “warm and good education” and build a child-friendly city and a child-friendly society in an all-round way. The city will implement the policy and supporting measures to allow couples to have up to three children, refine active fertility support measures, build a “1 + N” fertility support policy system, and encourage families in Wenzhou to give birth according to the policy; will reduce the cost of family parenting, properly determine the standard of parenting subsidies according to the municipal and county-level financial resources, and take the lead in the province in realizing the full coverage of preschool parenting education subsidies for all the families in the region; will implement the inclusion of care expenses for infants under three years old in the special additional deduction of personal income tax; will improve maternity leave and other systems; and will encourage enterprises to apply flexible working system for employees who have difficulties in raising babies.

In order to enhance the nursery service for 0-3 years old infants and solve the problem of “no nurseries for childcare”, the Plan clearly states that the city will include the infant care service in the urban and rural community service system, properly design and distribute the infant care service facilities suitable for the size of the permanent resident population, establish municipal and county-level comprehensive childcare service centers, and form an infant care institution system with public institutions as the main body and private institutions as supplements. The city will support public kindergartens in extending their childcare services by providing flexible and diverse care services such as full-time care, hourly care and short-time care; will encourage the development of diversified nursery mode and explore the development of embedded kindergartens in industrial parks; and will support enterprises, public institutions, social organizations and other social forces in setting up nurseries and promote the integrated services of private kindergartens.

Also, the city will create an “electronic map of maternal and child facilities in public places” and set up maternal and child rooms in urban complexes, commercial buildings, industrial parks and other public places; and will increase the supply of inclusive childcare services, and in the development and construction areas where newly-built commercial housing and resettlement housing are concentrated, allocate and build childcare facilities of the corresponding scale.