THE country’s capital of Beijing will shut around 1,000 manufacturing firms down by 2020 as part of a program aimed at curbing smog and boosting income in neighboring regions, domestic media said yesterday.

Beijing will focus on dynamic, high-tech industries and withdraw from “ordinary” manufacturing, the People’s Daily reported, citing a recent policy document published by the Beijing Municipal Government.

The city has already rejected registration applications from 19,500 firms, and shut down or relocated 2,465 “ordinary” manufacturers, the newspaper said.

China launched a plan to improve coordination in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in 2014 amid concerns that competition between the three jurisdictions was wasting resources and creating overcapacity.

It plans to strip Beijing of manufacturing and heavy industry, as well as relocating universities and some government departments into Hebei’s new economic zone of Xiongan.(SD-Agencies)