Beijing has seen an economic transformation over the past seven decades, said Pang Jiangqian, deputy head of the Beijing Bureau of Statistics, in a press conference on Monday. The city's regional GDP grew from 280 million yuan in 1949 to 3.03 trillion yuan in 2018.

Beijing's GDP has grown in leaps and bounds in the past seven decades. It recorded 280 million yuan in 1949 and 10.88 billion yuan in 1978, registering a dramatic increase in just 29 years, but much more followed. It passed the 100 billion yuan mark in 1994 and the 1 trillion yuan mark in 2007, taking only 16 years and 13 years, respectively.

Beijing's economic momentum has been only stronger over the past 10 years. Its GDP surpassed 2 trillion yuan in 2013 and hit a whopping 3.03 trillion yuan in 2018, almost 700 times as much as that of 1952 in comparable prices.

GDP per capita in Beijing also saw remarkable increase. It was 66 yuan in 1949, exceeded 1,000 yuan in 1975, 10,000 yuan in 1994, and 100,000 yuan in 2014. Last year, Beijing's GDP per capita reached 140,211 yuan.

With the city entering a period of economic transition, its economic growth is leveling off, maintaining between 6.5% and 7%. Also, Beijing is now witnessing a rise of advanced and sophisticated industries.

From the early 1950s to the start of China's reform and opening up, secondary industry was Beijing's main economic driver as Beijing focused on the construction of a modern industrial base, said Pang. However, the tertiary industry has been higher and higher on its agenda since the 1980s, accounting for over 60%, 70%, 80% and 81% of Beijing's growth in 1998, 2005, 2016, and 2018, respectively. Tertiary industry is the anchor of Beijing's economy today, Pang said.

Pang said that since the founding of the PRC, Beijing's economic driver has gone from alternating between consumer spending and investment, to both working simultaneously, to being led by consumer spending today. In 2007, Beijing's consumer spending-to-GDP ratio surpassed its investment-to-GDP ratio, which represented the shift to consumer spending-driven economic growth. Consumer spending has continued to expand, contributing to over 70% of Beijing's economic growth in 2018.

Pang also noted that Beijing's consumer spending growth is now fueled by both service spending and commodity spending instead of commodity spending alone. With the emergence of new forms and models of businesses after 2000, such as online shopping, service spending has been booming, making up more than half of total consumer spending and about 70% of spending growth.

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