Pudong New Area

Shanghai’s Pudong New Area plans to offer tax incentives to overseas bankers, brokers and insurers to help it become a global financial center. Possibly a secondary reaon is to head off challenges from Tianjin Municipality and Shenzhen.

Pudong will offer rental subsidies, tax rebates, free annual health checks and ease the process for foreigners to become Shanghai residents.

The incentives, which are expected to last until the end of 2010, are being discussed with China’s tax authority.

The district’s deputy chief, Yan Xu, said in an interview, ‘To create a financial hub like the City of London or Wall Street, we need financial experts and overseas talent. ‘We need financial industry workers with technical expertise that can come up with creative ideas, innovative products.’

Employees of overseas financial companies will get a RMB200,000 ($29,000) one-time rental subsidy and a 20% tax rebate, while their chief representatives will get tax subsidies of as much as 40%, according to the plan.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Shanghai partner Stacy Kwok said, ‘This is very welcome news.’

Pudong is home to 73 banks, 202 brokerages, 145 insurers and the larger of the mainland’s two equity bourses.
Source: Shanghai Daily

Impression of an ecocity

Construction of the transport infrastructure within the 4-sq-km Sino-Singaporean Eco-city start-up area of Tianjin has begun and full construction of the 30 sq. km. city will start next month.

In April, the Chinese and Singaporean governments approved a development plan for the eco-city. It will be the second flagship Sino-Singaporean cooperation project, the first being the Suzhou Industrial Park.

Tianjin eco-city

The green development will help Tianjin, a city of limited resources, in having sustainable development nearby.

The key performance index includes air, water, transport, forestation, energy efficiency and waste management.

It will not, like certain other cities, pursue a ‘zero CO2 emission’.

More than 90% of the traffic in the eco-city will be low-pollution public transport.

The eco-city, which is located 40 km from Tianjin city and 150 km from Beijing, will cover 10 sq km of salt pan, 10 sq km of desert and 10 sq km of watered, but low quality, land.

Located along the Jiyun River in Tianjin’s Hangu district it will have residences, commercial space and factories, all of which will comply with international standards of energy use and environmental protection.
Source: China Daily and Green Leap Forward

One does not normally think of zones when looking at maritime development.

In the Economic Region of Pan-Bohai Sea the ocean industry GDP reached RMB473.360 billion, accounting for 35.7% of China’s ocean industry GDP.

In the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone the ocean industry’s GDP is RMB457.174 billion.

in the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone it is RMB 252.986 billion.

The total GDP from China’s ocean industry reached RMB1.324 trillion yuan in the first half of 2008, growing by 14.4% over the same period last year. This accounts for 10.14% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Production (GDP).
Source: English People’s Daily Online

Huang Wenhua, director of the CETDZ’s administrative committee (Changchun Economic and Technical Development Zone) attributes the fast economic growth of the zone to a turnaround plan initiated in 2005.

He said, ‘The situation was clear, right under our noses. We needed more space.’

A blueprint drawn up to enlarge the areas to the east and north.
A plan to change from only manufacturing to innovation gradually took shape.

The original 10 special parks within the zone were trimmed and merged into three — automobiles and their parts, corn processing and related chemicals, and modern services.

RMB3.8 billion  was spent in 2006 and 2007 to upgrade infrastructure, including building more roads and railways.

Huang said the area has now set a ‘green threshold’ for investment.

Huang Wenhua said. ‘No matter how big the economic benefits are for an investment project, if it fails to pass the environmental evaluation by local environmental bureaus, we cannot accept it.’

It all seems to work. The value of gross industrial output value in the zone rose from RMB34.7 billion in 2005 to RMB62 billion in 2007.

Changchun’s ranking has now jumped to 15th overall, and to the top of the list of nine such zones in central and northeast China.
Source: China Daily

On the third day in the Chinese Lunar New Year of 1998 a software development base was set-up in Youjiacun Village of Dalian.

Ten years later, the software development base at that time has become the famous Dalian Soft Park. Dalian New Soft Park (Hekou Park Zone) of Neusoft Corporation was opened officially earlier this year.

It can hold 10,000 software engineers.

Dalian Tiandi Soft Park has a total investment of RMB15 billion and will be completed in 2017. It will be the first comprehensive community integrating office, residence, entertainment and study function of IT and software industry in China and the Asian-Pacific region. Much, much more HERE.
Source: China Economic Net

The writer worked as a publisher and journalist in Hong Kong for many years. When he first went to Hong Kong — don’t ask — Shenzhen was a grubby little village.

It is now China’s richest city ranked by per capita GDP and within another decade, it plans to become as modern and competitive as Singapore, Hong Kong and Seoul. And by 2030, if integrated with its neighbor Hong Kong it will be massive.

Hong Kong has conducted a feasibility study on the construction of the railway linking Shenzhen’s and Hong Kong’s airports.

If approved by the central government, would allow Shenzhen passengers to spend just 12 minutes traveling to Hong Kong international airport aboard a cross-border railway by 2011.

In May 1980, late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping designated four cities as ’special economic zones’ — the first testing grounds for the reform. Shenzhen was one of the first special economic zones (SEZs).

Not only Shenzhen, the entire Pearl River Delta took the lead in the reform and sought to follow the words of Deng Xiaoping, who said ‘to get rich is glorious’.

Today the city is home to some of China’s most important electronics manufacturers, such as telecom-equipment firm Huawei Technologies and mobile phone maker ZTE.

The rapid development of Shenzhen has also allowed Guangdong to become the richest province in China.

Now, Shenzhen is trying to reinvent itself as a high-tech economic powerhouse with an advanced services sector and more diversified ownership. Much more HERE.
Source: RedNet.cn

The Ningbo National Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, northeast of the city center and to the west of the Beilun District and the Ningbo port, is moving Ningbo from a single export-oriented model to that of a more comprehensive economy.

NBHTZ, which covers an area of 18.9 square kilometers, was created in 1999 and upgraded to a state level zone in January 2007.

Currently there are almost 600 enterprises in the zone.

The Ningbo Research and Development Park is still under construction but will be totally completed by the end of next year. It will have some 150 private and public research and development institutes. Plus college facilities such as the Zhejiang University National Science Park which is located in NBRDP and the Ningbo University which neighbors NBHTZ plus other public institutes and several technical services.

So there is already a strong pool of high tech organizations in several high tech sectors.
The result is a financially successful zone — GDP of the zone last year was RMB 4.5 billion - which has available a highly qualified technical workforce.

For communication NBHTZ is quite close to the city’s center; Lishe Airport is only 10 kilometers away; it is linked to the south with the Hangzhou-Ningbo expressway and connected to the north by the Hangzhou Bay Bridge.

These high tech developments are absolutely in line with the government’s stated intention of moving manufacturing up several notches to more high-tech, value added, goods.
Source: China Briefing News

Farmland has a direct bearing on the industrial zone concept. These zones have been eating into agricultural land. And some have been closed down for doing it illegally.

China has drawn a critical line of 120 million hectares as the official minimum of arable land to feed the world’s largest population. Statistics report the amount of arable land fell to 121.73 million hectares last year. Which is close to the tipping point.

If the agricultural land was upgraded then some of the problem might be solved. Thus the Chinese government will spend RMB12.7 billion ($1.85 billion) on upgrading lower-yield farmland this year. This according to the State Office for Comprehensive Agricultural Development.

The money, which is 10.27% more than last year, will transform 1.77 million hectares of lower-yield farmland into high-yield. As a result, three billion kilograms will be added to China’s total annual grain production capacity. (Do not use this year’s figures as any sort of a guide. China is enjoying a bumper harvest.)

As a working definition lower-yield farmland is farmland that has an output less than 20% of the regional average, calculated on a three-year base.
To change this means the goverment must:

Improve the irrigation system and road system
Transform mountainous farmland into terraces, making it easier  to work
Improve the soil quality by increasing organic matter content in the soil
Improve farming efficiency by training the farmers

Altogether 35 water-efficient projects for the medium-scale irrigated regions will be initiated this year with an investment of RMB301 million.
Source: LawInfo China

Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou HI-tech Development Zone, and Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Zone Marketing Status have been named the first national ecological demonstration industrial parks.

Suzhou is galloping ahead:
* 3,262 projects with total contractual foreign investment of $33.38 billion
* 30 new projects with total contractual foreign investment of $425.08 million.
* The largest 5-star deluxe hotel in Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou Jinji Lake Kempinski Grand Hotel, has now opened.
* Smith & Nephew, a medical device manufacturing company, has started construction of its first plant in China.
* Epic Games, the global leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software, has set up in the Park.
* A national conference on building national ecological demonstration parks, held in Tianjin Economic & Technological Development Zone.
* The 2nd China International Logistics Technology Exhibition was held at the Suzhou International Expo Center.
Source: All Roads Lead to China

[photopress:zoneshenzhen1979.gif,full,alignright]There is a site, China Unique, which tries to keep up with the situation regarding Special Economic Zones in China. It is a sort of basic primer in that it says SEZ are development zones established by the PRC to encourage foreign investment in China, bring much needed jobs, technical knowledge, and future tax revenues in return for significant tax concessions at start-up of the operations and over a number of years.

The biggest benefit to the foreign investor is significant tax concessions during the early life of the project. These rates can vary by site and are subject to change from time to time. A typical example of the PRC tax concessions offered to a manufacturing startup typically looks like:

No tax during start-up years before making a profit.
The first year that your company makes a profit starts the “Tax Clock” and is year one.
The first and second year after the tax clock starts, there is no tax.
For years three and four, there is 1/2 of the normal tax rate.
In the fifth year, the company pays the full normal tax rate.

[photopress:zone_zhuhai.jpg,full,alignleft]SEZ’s also often have spec building suitable for operations, which means a quicker start-up.

The site has a warning: CAUTION: Do not be fooled into the belief that starting up your manufacturing operation in an SEZ will either provide easy or automatically approval for domestic sales rights.

These rules change from time to time so do not take them as gospel. Our illustrations show the first SEZ, Shenzhen and Zhuhai.
Source: China Unique and Goliath