A decades-old idea about moving the Chinese capital out of Beijing has been revived for the umpteenth time, after wide swathes of the country’s north on Monday experienced the worst sandstorm in a decade.

Residents of Beijing and other northern areas started the week enveloped in a grayish yellow hue, with visibility in most parts of the national capital city down to 1 kilometer.

In cyberspace, people once again floated the possibility of shifting the center of Chinese authority away from the desert-battered north and toward the south, such as Wuhan city of Hubei province.

The idea of uprooting from Beijing is not new. Both government and community have brought it up over and over in the past decades, as the densely populated capital is a city of multiple environmental challenges.

Historical records show that sandstorms are an 800-year-old problem in China. Around May of 1155, Beijing suffered 17 sunless days of wind and sand, in what was probably the earliest report of a severe sandstorm devastating the area. Similar weather records from the Ming and Qing dynasties could also be found.

In 2000, then Chinese premier Zhu Rongji suggested that relocating the capital city was only a matter of time if the desertification could not be controlled. The debate reached a climax in 2006, when 479 delegates put their names to a joint proposal during the annual session of the National People’s Congress that March to get the central government out of Beijing.

Then there are other problems. Smog, traffic jams and a dense population have all contributed to the declining livability of Beijing.

Water scarcity is yet another issue. Decades of overexploiting water resources, combined with the half-moist, half-dry climate, are a perennial headache for the city authorities.

Up to now, the central government still has no plans to move out. Instead, it has in recent years been developing a couple of neighboring areas, Tongzhou District and Xiong’an New Area, as the “two wings” of Beijing.

Tongzhou District, located in southeastern Beijing, was initially planned as a new municipal administrative center of the capital in 2015, and was later upgraded to a sub-center of the capital in 2017.

Xiong’an New Area is a state-level zone in the Baoding area of Hebei province and takes over functions phased out from Beijing.

An academic in Hong Kong said that climate change would be a critical factor when a country considered shifting its capital.

“For example, a city or capital could be sited very close to the sea, but the government might want to think about a relocation because climate change caused water levels to rise,” Roger Tang, lecturer of the department of urban planning and design at the University of Hong Kong, told Apple Daily.

Moving a capital city was not easy, he said, as the government would have to take into account transport, infrastructure, administration and the economy. But given advances in modern technology and networks, the mobility of people and the impact of a relocation would be reduced, Tang said.

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