Beijing

Beijing is the capital of the People's Republic of China. With over 21 million residents, Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city as well as China's second largest city after Shanghai. It is located in Northern China, and is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of the State Council with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts. Beijing is mostly surrounded by Hebei Province with the exception of neighboring Tianjin to the southeast; together, the three divisions form the Jingjinji megalopolis and the national capital region of China.

Beijing is a global city and one of the world's leading centres for culture, diplomacy, politics, finance, business and economics, education, research, language, tourism, media, sport, science and technology and transportation. As a megacity, Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by urban population after Shanghai. It is home to the headquarters of most of China's largest state-owned companies and houses the largest number of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world, as well as the world's four biggest financial institutions by total assets. It is also a major hub for the national highway, expressway, railway, and high-speed rail networks. The Beijing Capital International Airport has been the second busiest in the world by passenger traffic (Asia's busiest) since 2010, and, as of 2016, the city's subway network is the busiest and longest in the world. The Beijing Daxing International Airport, a second international airport in Beijing, is the largest single-structure airport terminal in the world.

Combining both modern and traditional style architectures, Beijing is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a rich history dating back over three millennia. As the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political center of the country for most of the past eight centuries, and was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium CE. With mountains surrounding the inland city on three sides, in addition to the old inner and outer city walls, Beijing was strategically poised and developed to be the residence of the emperor and thus was the perfect location for the imperial capital. The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates. Beijing is one of the most important tourist destinations of the world. In 2018, Beijing was the second highest earning tourist city in the world after Shanghai. Beijing is home to many national monuments and museums and has seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites—the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Ming Tombs, Zhoukoudian, and parts of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal—all of which are popular tourist locations. Siheyuans, the city's traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing.

Beijing's public universities make up more than one-fifth of Double First-Class Universities, and many of them consistently rank among the best in the Asia-Pacific and the world. Beijing is home to the two best C9 League universities (Tsinghua and Peking) in Asia & Oceania region and emerging countries. Beijing CBD is a center for Beijing's economic expansion, with the ongoing or recently completed construction of multiple skyscrapers. Beijing's Zhongguancun area is a world leading center of scientific and technological innovation as well as entrepreneurship. Beijing has been ranked the city with the largest scientific research output by the Nature Index since 2016. The city has hosted numerous international and national sporting events, the most notable being the 2008 Summer Olympics and 2008 Summer Paralympics Games. In 2022, Beijing became the first city ever to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics, and also the Summer and Winter Paralympics. Beijing hosts 175 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many organizations, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Silk Road Fund, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the Central Academy of Drama, the Central Conservatory of Music, and the Red Cross Society of China.

As of 2022, Beijing's nominal GDP was CN￥4.16 trillion ($619 billion in nominal, $1.016 trillion in PPP), about 3.44% of the country's GDP and ranked 13th among province-level administrative units; its nominal GDP per capita was US$28,258 (CN¥190,059) and ranked the 1st in the country.[3][124] It also ranks the tenth largest in the metropolitan economies in the world. Beijing's nominal GDP is projected to reach US$1.1 trillion in 2035, ranking among the world's top 10 largest cities (together with Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in China) according to a study by Oxford Economics, and its nominal GDP per capita will reach US$45,000 in 2030.

Due to the concentration of state owned enterprises in the national capital, Beijing in 2013 had more Fortune Global 500 Company headquarters than any other city in the world. As of August 2022, Beijing has 54 Fortune Global 500 companies, more than Japan, the third-place country after China and the United States. Beijing has also been described as the "billionaire capital of the world". In 2020, Beijing is the fifth wealthiest city in the world, with a total wealth amounts to $2 trillion. Beijing is classified as an Alpha+ (global first-tier) city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, indicating its influence in the region and worldwide and making it one of the world's Top 10 major cities. In the 2021 Global Financial Centres Index, Beijing was ranked as having the sixth-most competitive financial center in the world and fourth-most competitive in the whole Asia & Oceania region (behind Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore).

As of 2021, Beijing was ranked first globally in terms of "Global City Competitiveness" in the 2020–2021 Global Urban Competitiveness Report jointly released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and the United Nations Programme for Human Settlements (UN-Habitat).

Education and research in Beijing :

Beijing is a world leading center for scientific and technological innovation and has been ranked the No.1 city in the world with the largest scientific research output, as tracked by the Nature Index since 2016. The city is also leading the world with the highest share of articles published in the fields of physical sciences, chemistry, and earth and environmental sciences, especially in the United Nations'17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related output.
Beijing has over 90 public colleges and universities, which is the largest urban public university system in Asia and the first city in China with most higher education institutions, and it is home to the two best universities (Tsinghua and Peking) in the whole of Asia-Oceania region and emerging countries with its shared rankings at 16th place in the world by the 2022 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.

Beijing also has the highest number of universities of any city in the country, representing more than one-fifth of 147 Double First-Class Universities, a national plan to develop elite Chinese universities into world-class institutions by the end of 2050. A number of Beijing's most prestigious universities consistently rank among the best in the Asia-Pacific and the world, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, Beijing Normal University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beihang University, Beijing Institute of Technology, China Agricultural University, Minzu University of China, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, University of International Business and Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Central University of Finance and Economics. These universities were selected as "985 universities" or "211 universities" by the Chinese government in order to build world-class universities.

The city is a seat of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has been consistently ranked the No.1 research institute in the world by Nature Index since the list's inception in 2014, by Nature Research. The academy also runs the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is located in Beijing and ranked among the world's top five research institutions by the Nature Index. Beijing is also a site of Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Some of the national key universities in Beijing are:

Beijing Forestry University
Beijing Jiaotong University
Beijing University of Technology
Beijing University of Chinese Medicine
Beijing Institute of Technology
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute
Beijing Foreign Studies University
Beijing Language and Culture University
Beijing Sport University
Central Conservatory of Music
Central Academy of Fine Arts
Central Academy of Drama
China University of Geosciences (Beijing)
China University of Petroleum (Beijing)
China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing)
China University of Political Science and Law
China Foreign Affairs University
Chinese People's Public Security University
China Women's University
China Youth University for Political Sciences
China Institute of Industrial Relations
Communication University of China
North China Electric Power University
Peking Union Medical College
University of International Relations

Beijing is also home to several religious institutions, Some of them are listed as follows:

China Islamic Institute (中国伊斯兰教经学院)
Beijing Islamic Institute (北京伊斯兰教经学院)
The Buddhist Academy of China (中国佛学院)
High-level Tibetan Buddhism College of China (中国藏语系高级佛学院)
National Seminary of Catholic Church in China (中国天主教神哲学院)

The city's compulsory education system is among the best in the world: in 2018, 15-year-old students from Beijing (together with Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangsu) outperformed all of the other 78 participating countries in all categories (math, reading, and science) in the Program for International Student Assessment, a worldwide study of academic performance conducted by the OECD.