Commercial zone set for major 100 billion yuan expansion initative

Unlike the Forbidden City or the Summer Palace, the twin hearts of Beijing's cultural heritage and its imperial past, the city's Central Business District (CBD) is the place to feel the pulse of its contemporary commercial ascendancy.

Back in the 1990s, Beijing CBD was just an idea in the minds of urban planners. Fast forward 20 years and the 3.99 sq km plot of land is now a thriving center of business activity, a window on China's economic emergence and a testament to the country's integration into the wider 21st century world.

The area has the greatest concentration of financial institutions in the city. Deutsche Bank, Citi Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, Swiss Reinsurance, Munich Re Group, SCORall these global names have gathered in the steel and glass high-rises of the CBD. The NASDAQ Stock Exchange, as well as the stock exchanges of New York, Tokyo and Korea, all have offices in the CBD - a clear indication of Beijing's newfound status among the world's financial markets.