Shanghai offered path to become a 'global city'

If Shanghai intends to become an important intersection in the global economy of the future, its government should better serve the people and business.

Shanghai municipal government designated the Shanghai-based East China Normal University (ECNU) to undertake a research project of building Shanghai into a "global center city" in the next 30 years, after it turned down all other bidders for the project last month because of their "irrelevance."

Zeng Gang, a city planner and the leading researcher of this project with ECNU, said he wants to look into the future with this project that is different from any other previous research.

"I must envision, with my team, how Shanghai will look like in 30 years, and suggest to the government how to do it," Zeng said.

"This project is a big challenge for my team because there are too many uncertainties in technology, economy, energy resources and geopolitics, all of which will influence Shanghai's future."

Shanghai's government called for bids for 70 key research projects on the city's future on April 1, and received 281 bids in the next 20 days. Each of the 70 projects is vetted through group expert discussion, resident representatives and civil servants, which can last for a whole year.

According to the city government's requirement, Shanghai should become a management center, an operation center, an innovation center and service center to the world in the future.

The research project Shanghai's global city development strategy, which ECNU was assigned, should tell the city governments how to build Shanghai into a global city like New York, London and Tokyo.

Pressed by the central government, Shanghai's government wants to draft a blueprint for the city for the next 30 years.

But the government imposes compulsory requirements on the project for all bidders, which "must combine the needs of national development strategy, regional integration of the Yangtze River Delta and the Shanghai's transformation." That explains why it is difficult for the bidders, research institutes and agencies from around the world to win the bid because few bidders can handle such multiple demands that require not only coordination between the central government and Shanghai government, but also compromise among the14 city-level governments in five provincial regions of the Yangtze River Delta.

The research team led by Zeng has cooperated with the Shanghai government in the field of city planning and construction. It is not an accident that the local authority resorts to Zeng to undertake a key project when no bidders can meet all of the requirements.

The main task is to improve Shanghai's ability of allocating global resources, including production materials, prices and innovations, noted Quan Heng, an economist with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. None of this is easy.

"Strong innovation, operation management and service are basic characteristics of global cities," said Quan. "To become a global center city, Shanghai must find it special position in the world, which is based on its further integration into the Yangtze River Delta."

The overdue market-oriented financial reform in China that meets great resistance from State-owned banks and enterprises proves to be a hindrance hampering Shanghai's resurgence as a global financial center as it was before the end of World War II when Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore were less known.

But Zeng believes, especially after China replaced Japan as the second largest economy in the world two years ago, Shanghai gains more advantages than the other Chinese cities like Beijing and Tianjin that set similar goals years ago, to become a global center city.

"The booming city cluster in the Yangtze River Delta form a solid foundation for Shanghai's rise and regional integration into a big Shanghai," said Zeng. "Shanghai is also a joining point of the Maritime Silk Road and Silk Road Economic Belt."

These are two strategies proposed by Chinese leaders to promote international trade and cooperation since last year.

Zuo Xuejin, a demographer councilor of Shanghai government, pointed out before the central government attempts to coordinate the all city governments in the delta region, Shanghai government should try to build some public infrastructures with its neighbors such as Kunshan and Taicang in Jiangsu to form a trans-city-border area with the small cities at its border.

He believes the small cities around Shanghai have the desire to be recognized by Shanghai as an integral part of the metropolitan area. But, Shanghai has long regarded them as "foreign" in its expansion, even if hundreds of thousands of commuters and businessmen go across the borders of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang each day.

Regional integration should bring with it more efficient of land use and resource distribution, instead of a pure expansion of the urban area.

Critics are concerned that the research project undertaken by Zeng's team cannot be realized if the government still relies on revenue from buy-low-sell-high land transfers and if the government always regards urbanization as way to boost investment-driven growth.

Last month, the city government decided the construction area of Shanghai will be limited to 3,226 square kilometers (km), and the construction area will not expand after 2020. That means the city only has 156 sq km of construction land for new buildings in the following six years. But in the past six years, the area of construction land in Shanghai expanded by twice that amount.

Zeng must bear in mind the baselines and always be clear about researchers' limited influence on local governors in Shanghai's context.

Some officials worked their way up to the central government from Shanghai. But they have not made Shanghai a reform pioneer or even a model city in China today.

In the future, a good natural environment for Shanghai, compared with the other Chinese cities, will not become a main attraction for the talents Shanghai needs most, as long as the government can stick to the ecological and land use baseline drawn by it.

It is faster to boost economic growth through increasing investment in the property market. And the easy money from land transfers also further emboldens the government to interfere with the other market activities and borrow money.

These are all working against the government's goal of a global center city. If Zeng's research cannot be accompanied by the transformation of government, the roadmap proposed by Zeng will be a hard thing to follow.

liyang@chinadaily.com.cn