Up, Up and Away 

A Chinese worker wades in front of the construction site of the Hangzhou Bay bridge in this file photo taken June 9, 2005. [Reuters]

Expecting ever more businessmen and tourists, luxury hotel chains like the Hyatt Regency and the Shangri-La are moving into Ningbo, which could have as many as 20 five-star hotels by 2009. Last year it had just four.

The University of Nottingham in Ningbo, an offshoot of the English university, became the first fully equipped foreign campus in China when it opened in 2005.

But for now, the city thrives mainly by pouring concrete.

At the southern end of the Hangzhou Bay bridge, heavy trucks are busy dumping earth into the sea to reclaim land for a huge industrial park. Factories already line the road to the bridge.

Encouraged by tax breaks, manufacturers are spending more on high-tech equipment and on developing new products.

AUX, an air-conditioner maker, invested around 200 million yuan on research and development in 2006. It is able to charge 30 percent more for the higher-value products that resulted.

"With improved branding and technology, we're expanding into new business lines and more markets overseas," its chairman, Zheng Jianjiang, told Reuters.

Jason Lu, a sales manager for a local textiles company, said his firm had spent more than $50 million on state-of-the-art equipment from Europe to boost productivity and move its home-textile products upmarket.

This is all music to the ears of Ningbo's planners, who are banking on logistics and port services, as well as heavy industries such as chemicals and oil, to keep driving growth.

"Ningbo is upgrading its industrial structure and the proportion of high-tech products is increasing," said Yang Mingxiang, director of the Ningbo Development and Research Centre, a city government think-tank.

($1=7.598 yuan)

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