Beijing will take aggressive measures to cure the "big city disease", making sure the city's population is within 21.8 million by the end of this year, said Wang Anshun, mayor of Beijing, at a meeting analyzing Beijing's economic situations in the first half of this year.

Beijing is facing severe resource and environment pressures caused by fast growing population. By the end of 2014, the permanent resident population of Beijing was 21.5 million, among which 12.8 million living in the six urban districts. Beijing is haunted with water resource shortage, air pollution, traffic congestions and other problems caused by insufficient environment capacity.

According to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region's Coordinated Development Planning Outline, the population of Beijing should be within 23 million by 2020 and the ratio of urban population should be 15 percent lower than that of 2014.

"Beijing will take a series function dispersal measures to prevent new population gathering, making sure the permanent resident population is within 21.8 million by the end of this year. The municipal government and all the districts and counties of Beijing have signed the letter of responsibility to fulfill the goal," said Wang.

The mayor also said that Beijing will take innovative measures to deal with overpopulation, traffic congestions, and environment pollution, so as to making breakthrough in curing the "big city disease".