Thirty households have returned to newly built homes in Beijing after a 55-year-old apartment block, where three families once shared one bathroom, was demolished and rebuilt on the same site under the city's urban renewal drive.
The building in the Bajiao Road residential compound in Beijing's Shijingshan District was built in 1971. The 30-household block had shared facilities and an outdated layout that could not be addressed through conventional upgrades such as exterior repairs and pipe replacement.
The rebuilt block retained the same number of homes, floors and orientation, while increasing total floor area by about 23 percent. Each household gained an extra 12 to 15 square meters of living space, along with a private kitchen and bathroom, an elevator and accessibility features for older residents.
"There is much more space now, and we have parking spaces. It used to be quite cramped. Now it's bright and comfortable, with larger windows and better sound insulation. The interior finish has been done very well," said resident Yin Hongmei.
The redevelopment was funded primarily by original residents under a cost-sharing arrangement, with each household contributing 180,000 to 230,000 yuan (about 26,800 to 34,200 U.S. dollars). Local authorities conducted home visits and held on-site consultations, while lawyers and notaries helped resolve outstanding property ownership issues.
The homes were handed over this month, with two household representatives receiving property ownership certificates a few days later.
The project follows trial rules issued by Beijing in May that allow modest increases in permitted floor area to encourage qualifying urban renewal projects.
Beijing aims to complete renovations in more than 300 aging residential compounds this year, install more than 800 elevators in old buildings, and address safety risks in 507 dilapidated and structurally unsafe buildings.
Beijing residents return to rebuilt homes under urban renewal push
People from different walks of life in the United States have stressed the global significance of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit, expressing hopes that the visit will strengthen bilateral cooperation across various sectors.
Xi arrived in the United States on Wednesday to begin a three-day state visit at the invitation of U.S. President Donald Trump. It comes after Trump paid a state visit to China in May, which marked the first by a U.S. president in nearly nine years.
"I think these have been unique spectacles and these are historical moments which will reverberate, I mean years and decades later where the two are partners, not rivals and should see that relationship in that context and whether the two sides should coexist with each other," said Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies.
"You know, these are the two largest and most important countries in the world, geopolitically, economically, so virtually anything these two countries do with each other, it's going to have an impact on the people," said Dan McClory, a U.S. international investor.
Many Americans also noted that Xi's visit will create more opportunities to foster people-to-people exchanges between the two countries and further enhance mutual trust.
"What we need is a really firm base of understanding and that's what person-to-person kinds of relationships happen, that's what they bring. And I believe that they also promote trade, to be honest," said Michael Dembrow, former Senate member of Oregon.
"The announcement that President Xi made of inviting 100,000 youngsters to China, I think is a very welcome one. I would like to see also that the U.S. be a little bit more welcoming in terms of Chinese scholars, academics and students. The hope is that as U.S.-China relations ease and settle into a more coexistent framework that it will also encourage people to go across and see each other first hand and that would be, as I said, the most important stabilizing ballast in the relationship," said Gupta.
Xi said 100,000 young Americans will be invited to visit China for exchanges and study over the next five years on Thursday morning while attending a welcome ceremony held by Trump at the White House.
US experts, officials hail significance of Xi's visit, call for closer cooperation
