HHebei province covers 187,600 square kilometers of northern People’s Republic of China (PRC). It surrounds PRC’s major cities of Beijing and Tianjin and, like most other provinces in the country, has rapidly urbanized over the past decades. From 38% of its total 69.4 million people in 2006, the province’s urban population swelled to 55% of the total 75.2 million in 2017.