On the evening of February 27, 2014, a piece of news profoundly changed the region where I live and brought me an infinitely rich experience in my journalistic career - on February 26, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over a symposium in Beijing to listen to a special report on the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and make important instructions. This marks the official rise of the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei as a national strategy!
Since then, I've been following and documenting every bit of this space. In the past ten years, I have gained a sense of professional accomplishment in manuscripts such as "Sanshang "Three Boundary Monuments", "Water Tank" Dismantling the Net", and "Spring to Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei", etc., and have also cultivated my work habits of taking root in grassroots research, and have also practiced the ability to tell big stories with small incisions. Ten years of reports on the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei have made me feel the greatness of a national strategy at the grassroots level.
One
Excavate typical concrete images to show the power of China
In the early days of the implementation of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development strategy, there were overwhelming media reports: some analyzed and prospected from a policy perspective, some were compared and interpreted in combination with the construction of foreign urban agglomerations, and some were reported on specific cases...... The enthusiasm of journalists is a reflection of the vitality of this strategy. However, it is impossible for any new thing to see great results immediately after it is launched, and the over-focus on "progress", including myself, often makes the early Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coverage too macro or too specific, and lacks systematization. How to stand out from the crowd of similar stories? This is a question that I often think about in 2014.
Discover the typologies and face the problems head-on. When I was thinking about "breaking through", a concrete image gradually became clear in my mind - "Three Realms Monument". In July 2013, when I followed Tianjin electric power workers up the mountain to patrol the line, I found this trihedral boundary pillar that divides Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. Stand on it and walk a few steps in different directions, and the mobile phone text message will prompt "Welcome to Beijing", "Welcome to Tianjin" and "Welcome to Hebei". What are the similarities and differences between the villages bordering here and belonging to different provinces and cities, and will there be any special feelings?
With this curiosity and anticipation in mind, I presented the "Three Realms Monument" and the initial concept of the report at a brainstorming session in September 2014, and received immediate support, so I went to conduct in-depth interviews with my colleagues from the sister branch. At the time, we were struck by the disparities at the grassroots level.
The story of a pair of sisters I wrote is most illustrative – the elder sister married into a village next door to Beijing, drank tap water from a deep well and lived in a small villa, while the younger sister stayed in the village in Hebei Province, drinking water from a cellar stored in rainwater, and the road connecting the sisters' home was less than 1 kilometer, but "as soon as it was bumpy, she knew that she would go back to Hebei". If we hadn't seen it with our own eyes, it would have been hard to imagine that there are still many people in the vicinity of the capital in the 21st century who are worried about water.
The story is very unique and the material is very complete, but how to grasp the report? In fact, the problems in development should never be evaded, and it is precisely because of the existence of these problems that the central government has promulgated a national strategy for the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei with great foresight, so as to solve the problem of Beijing's big city and solve the problem of uncoordinated regional development.
Based on this thinking, I took the lead in telling the story of the "Three Realms Monument". In reports such as "The Bittersweet and Bitter Life of the Residents of the "Three Boundary Monuments" and "The Testimony of the "Three Boundary Monuments" - The People's Expectations for the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei", I spent a lot of space to write deeply and thoroughly about the problems and root causes of the barriers in the three places, and fully introduced the expectations of the people in the three places, and combined with the changes in the national strategic outlook that has just been introduced at the end. Once these manuscripts were launched, they achieved good dissemination results. Since then, other media have followed up on the "Three Boundary Monuments" to jointly reveal the profound meaning of this national strategy.
Continue to follow up, and the water drops wear through the stone. Because of their proximity to each other, the people under the "Three Realms Monument" not only perceive the differences most obviously, but also perceive the changes most obviously. Therefore, I started a ten-year follow-up report on the "Three Realms Monument", and every once in a while, I used one or several reports to record the changes here.
In 2015's "The Three Realms Monument" Tells the Yesterday and Today of the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei", readers can see that due to the cancellation of mobile phone roaming charges and long-distance charges in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei by three basic telecommunications companies, the people near the "Three Realms Monument" have made phone calls cheaper; in 2016's "Sanshang "Three Boundary Monuments": A Documentary of the New Changes in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei" and "The Story of Drilling Wells in the Former Ganjian Stream", readers can see that some local villages have built new roads out of the mountains and laid deep wells with stable water outlets; and in 2017's "1 km Gap, 3 Years of Catching Up" , the reader can see that in many villages, water pipes are connected to households, and various welfare benefits of residents have also been improved......
□ In September 2016, Li Kun (first from right) interviewed villagers in Qianganjian Village, Hebei Province
In 2024, after my fifth visit to this "Three Realms Monument", "making dreams come true" has become an important point that my colleagues and I would like to express in the manuscript "Changes under the "Three Realms Monuments: Observations on the 10th Anniversary of the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei", which is also one of my greatest feelings about the coordinated development strategy of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei.
As the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei enters the second decade, my own "Three Realms Monument Story" has opened a "new chapter" - in addition to the "Three Realms Monument" mentioned above, I have found three other Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei "Three Realms Monuments", starting with "Reporter's Notes: Ten Years of Searching for the "Three Realms Monuments"", I will continue to tell more stories of the "Three Realms Monuments" to readers.
Two
Track key areas and highlight top-level design
Starting from the "pain points", we can explore the significance of a strategy to the greatest extent, and this insight in the process of promoting the reporting of the "Three Boundary Monuments" has brought me a lot of inspiration. In the process of interviewing the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, "superb top-level design" is one of my major feelings about this strategy, and how to report this "sense of luxury" is another key point I have been thinking about. Combined with some "moments" in the interview, I focused on the areas that are most closely related to the people and promoted "meso-reporting".
Demonstrate scientific design in the transformation of "no detour". On August 24, 2014, the Hebei delegation visited Tianjin, and the two sides signed five cooperation framework agreements and memorandums on the coordinated development of the two places. A local responsible comrade said on the spot at the meeting that there is no direct high-speed railway between Tianjin and Shijiazhuang, and many people have to detour to Beijing to travel between the two places in order to be fast, and this problem must be resolved as soon as possible. Sure enough, more than a year later, the Tianjin-Baozhou Railway was opened to traffic, and there was no need to bypass Beijing to Tianjin, Tangshan, and Qinhuangdao from central and southern Hebei.
Transportation integration is the easiest area for the three places to reach a consensus, which is not only written into the "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Development Plan Outline" of the three first breakthrough areas, but also the easiest to reflect the "design sense" of the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. So, I started to pay more attention and focus on rail transit.
On December 30, 2022, the Jingtang Intercity Railway and the Baodi-Beichen section of the Jingbin Intercity Railway were put into operation, marking that the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Railway has an operating mileage of more than 10,000 kilometers and covers all cities with a population of more than 200,000 along the line. Among the 8 stations opened by Jingtang Intercity, the establishment of Yutian South Railway Station reflects the comprehensive consideration of the industrial and location advantages of Yahongqiao Town, Yutian County, where it is located. In fact, in the 2016 manuscript "Jingdong Town Reflects 500 Years of Traffic Rise and Fall History - Reporter Visits Yahong Bridge at Night", we have already experienced and analyzed this consideration.
At that time, the "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Intercity Railway Network Plan" had just been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, and my colleagues from the brother branch and I started a continuous report on the topic of "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei on the track". In the manuscript "How to "Land" Nearly 3,500 Kilometers of "Huge" Intercity Railway?—— Xinhua News Agency Reporter "Seven Questions" of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Railway Builders", we analyzed in detail the significance of the establishment of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Intercity Railway Investment Co., Ltd. and the characteristics of the new construction model of "track + land"; in the manuscript "The Growth of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei on the Track", we introduced the important role of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei in China's rail transit in combination with the development process of railways......
In the rivers and in the sky, we can see synergistic development. Ecology is another area of breakthrough in the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and it is also the focus of my attention. The "synergistic development" in a river struck me.
From 2014 to 2016, I listened to Zhou Chaohong's proposal on establishing an ecological compensation mechanism for water sources from Luan to Tianjin. At that time, cage fish farming in the Panjiakou Reservoir was common, which posed great harm to the downstream water quality, but simply banning it would affect the livelihood of fishermen, so it was necessary to take a thorough consideration, and ecological compensation was an optional path. Combined with this clue, I began to conduct in-depth research.
From October 2016 to May 2017, Hebei Province comprehensively cleaned up the cage fish farming in Panjiakou and other reservoirs, and in June 2017, the first phase of the "Agreement on Horizontal Ecological Compensation for the Upstream and Downstream of Luan" was officially signed, and three phases have been signed so far.
In the manuscript "The Story of the "Water Tank" Dismantling the Net" and "The 40th Anniversary of the Completion of the Luan-Tianjin Water Diversion Project", the story of Li Jianmin, a villager of Baitaizi Village, Huanluotai Town, Kuancheng County, who was worried about "dismantling the net and selling fish", is vivid and powerful - later, he got the compensation, opened a farmhouse, and ate the "gold and silver mountains" brought by the lucid waters and lush mountains.
Three
"Anatomy of sparrows" samples, reflecting grassroots actions
The promotion of a national strategy ultimately depends on local implementation, however, some reports reflecting local work are often easy to write as experience propaganda, and the effect is greatly reduced. In order to take the grassroots as a writing activity, it is necessary to take root and discover the endogenous motivation that is truly stimulated.
Squatting in the "small Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei" to show the test results in key samples. The "Tongwu Corridor" is a key sample that my colleagues and I have focused on in recent years. In the interview on the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, we happened to hear a new word - "Tongwu Corridor", referring to Tongzhou District of Beijing, Wuqing District of Tianjin, and Langfang City of Hebei. Up to now, the three districts and cities have signed more than 90 agreements at various levels and in various fields.
Focusing on this key area of initiative, we comprehensively introduced all aspects of the coordinated development experiment of the three places in the manuscripts such as "Tongwu Corridor Experimental Field" Exploring the Path for the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and "Tongwu Corridor: Small Samples and Large Synergy". At the same time, I also used Wuqing District as an important research base and started multiple rounds of writing.
In the draft of "Wealth on the Track: The Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei from the Perspective of Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Effect", I combined the advantages of Wuqing Station as the only intermediate stop station between Beijing and Tianjin, and comprehensively analyzed the local construction of "Florentia Village" business district and the construction of Jingbin Industrial Park to serve Beijing enterprises.
From point to surface, dig deep into regional cooperation along the industrial chain. At the 2023 Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Industrial Chain and Supply Chain Conference, the three places announced that they are collaboratively compiling six cross-regional industrial chain maps, including hydrogen energy and biomedicine, and implementing the "network weaving project" of the industrial chain to deepen cooperation. In fact, industrial chain collaboration is another example of my focus on the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, inspired by the reports during the epidemic in 2020.
At the beginning of that year, the new crown pneumonia epidemic was raging, and after the Spring Festival holiday, many enterprises in Beijing could not resume work on time. Taking Beijing Benz, whose industrial chain covers Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, as an example, after the vigorous coordination of the industry and information technology departments in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, from the end of February to the beginning of March, the company's supporting enterprises in Tianjin and Hebei have resumed work and production.
After learning about this clue, I interviewed the Tianjin Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology and other relevant departments in a timely manner, and wrote the news "The resumption rate of 188 supporting enterprises in Tianjin of Beijing's key enterprises exceeds ninety" on the Internet. In the manuscript of the "Xinhua All Media Headlines" column of the sixth anniversary of the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei that year, "Petals work together to achieve prosperity - Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei strives to answer the "additional questions" of anti-epidemic and hand in the collaborative "interim volume", I also recorded this pioneering achievement of the three places with the subtitle of "resumption of work and production and joint development".
When interviewed in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone in June 2023, the heads of many enterprises, including Beijing Benz, told me that the efficient linkage of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei allowed them to see the advantages of laying out the industrial chain in this region, and that Beijing Benz's suppliers in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei had expanded to 126, accounting for about 30% of the total, and about 50% of its total output value also came from Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. This vivid story was later included in many of my reports.
Focus on the wonderful moments and record the endogenous power of the place. On February 25, 2023, on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Tianjin, which has just proposed the "Ten Actions" such as "Promoting the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei", took the initiative to organize a seminar on "Promoting the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei".
On that day, seeing the three-hour heated discussion in the venue and the yellow wax plum blossoming outside the venue, I immediately picked up my pen and wrote a reporter's note with the title of "Spring to Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei" to record the moments in the long river of history.
Over the years, in the "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Local Report" focusing on Tianjin, such as "Tianjin Impression in the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei", "Winning the "Pingjin Campaign" in the 21st Century - Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Development in Tianjin, and "Tianjin Pilot Free Trade Zone - Serving the Coordinated Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei to Advance in Depth", I have not focused on the demonstration of results, but on the spirit of the local government under the guidance of this strategy.
□ Some of the works of coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei
Four
Pay attention to the pioneer trend and look forward to the strategic future
Sing the "Tale of Two Cities" of Beijing and Tianjin, build a world-class urban agglomeration in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and strive to become a pioneer and demonstration area for Chinese-style modernization...... These are the important directions for the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei that the central government has continuously emphasized. As a reporter who has been tracking and reporting on the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei in the past ten years, I know very well that the intention of the manuscript must be future-oriented, combining the local atmosphere of grassroots interviews with the pioneer trends.
Experience the "Tale of Two Cities" in Beijing and Tianjin. On August 28, 2014, the T2 terminal of Tianjin Airport was opened, and Tianjin Metro Line 2 was directly connected, so that residents of the two places can enjoy the seamless splicing of "Beijing-Tianjin air-rail intermodal transport". On the same day, I experienced the whole process of taking a plane from Beijing to Tianjin, and wrote "A Tale of Two Cities in One Hour from Beijing South Railway Station to Tianjin Airport", which received a good response. Similarly, nine years later, at the end of 2023, with the completion and opening of the Jinxing Railway connecting Tianjin West Railway Station and Beijing Daxing International Airport, I instructed front-line reporters to write experiential reports, and also planned an in-depth report entitled "Four High-speed Railways Playing a New Chapter of Beijing-Tianjin's "Tale of Two Cities", telling the significance of infrastructure improvement to Beijing-Tianjin's "Tale of Two Cities".
In addition to experiential reporting, in 2023, focusing on "combining Beijing's scientific and technological innovation advantages with Tianjin's advanced manufacturing R&D advantages", I interviewed Beijing and Tianjin for a month, and wrote an in-depth report "Beijing-Tianjin "A Tale of Two Cities" Sings a New Melody" in the direction of "new space", "new advantages", "new guidance" and "new contributions", systematically analyzing the characteristics and missions of Beijing-Tianjin "A Tale of Two Cities".
The spatial layout of the city is studied by taking the "group" as the unit. After consulting the information of many recognized world-class urban agglomerations such as the Atlantic Coast Urban Agglomeration in the Northeast United States, the Pacific Coastal Urban Agglomeration in Japan, and the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration in the Mainland, I planned and led the writing of a new media manuscript in 2021 entitled "What Does the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei World-Class Urban Agglomeration Look Like?" The paper was adopted by 130 media outlets, and the Xinhua News Agency client was viewed more than 1.5 million times. At the same time, over the years, I have also conducted in-depth research on several "clusters" that support the construction of world-class urban agglomerations.
In the manuscripts such as "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Takes Off Hand in Hand - Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Strives to Build a World-class Airport Cluster", "From Disorderly Competition to In-depth Cooperation: China's Bohai Bay Ports Work Together to Build a World-class Port Cluster", and "High-speed Rail Helps Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Accelerate the Construction of a World-class City Cluster", I have studied the construction of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei airport cluster, port cluster and rail transit cluster, and in "Tianjin: New Urban Space Empowers a Beautiful New Life" and "Tianjin Will Build a Twin City Development Pattern of "Tianjin City" and "Bincheng" In other manuscripts, I took Tianjin as an example to talk about the significance of urban spatial layout to regional development. These manuscripts have now become auxiliary literature for the study of the construction of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei world-class urban agglomeration.
Put Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei in a larger scope to taste the deep meaning of synergy. "Striving to make Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei a pioneer and demonstration area of Chinese-style modernization" is a brand-new goal, and it is also an important mission for the future of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei that I focus on. "The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development strategy shoulders the important mission of narrowing the gap between the north and south of China. In the interview, a number of experts said.
In view of this, in the review of reports such as "Obvious Advantages and Sufficient Confidence: Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Strives to Become a Pioneer and Demonstration Zone of Chinese-style Modernization", I consciously highlighted the role of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei in leading the country's high-quality development as an important power source, reflected the top-level design through grassroots brushstrokes, and explored the new achievements of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei in promoting the development of the Bohai Rim Economic Zone and driving the development of the northern hinterland.