Rust Belt label baffles Liaoning's capital

It has been good to escape the somewhat unseasonably hot May weather in Beijing for the cooler climes of Northeast China.

I always seem to be sent to Shenyang, Liaoning province, about 700 kilometers north of the capital, to report on some aspect of how China's supposed Rust Belt is managing to restructure its economy as its heavy industries decline.

Liaoning's capital never somehow quite fits that narrative. With its thriving financial sector along its Golden Mile financial area and an influx of German engineers and managers working at the nearby BMW plants, it looks and feels nothing other than prosperous.

Apart from that, the former Manchu capital, which sits on the Hunhe River, is one of my favorite Chinese cities, with some fine architecture and an interesting history to boot.

That Shenyang - and the Dongbei (Northeast) region as a whole - should always be referred to as being somewhat down at heel, mystifies the locals too.

"You have to go back 50 years to when everyone around here worked in heavy industries," a colleague who works locally told me. "What everyone focuses on is our economy growing slower than the rest of China but with lower property prices than the major cities, people have money to spend."

They clearly do that in many of the trendy new restaurants emerging around the city, some of which are in its vibrant Korea Town - Liaoning, of course, borders the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

It was there a few years ago that I was presented with my greatest culinary horror in China - a plate of live squid with their tentacles writhing away in front of me.

My focus this time has been on the China (Liaoning) Pilot Free Trade Zone, one of seven new FTZs launched recently, bringing the national total to 11.

The best-known, of course, is the Shanghai one, which was launched in 2013 and designed to open up China's financial markets.

Shenyang's specialization in the Liaoning FTZ is the automotive industry and equipment manufacturing, bringing in an element of robotics.

One of the most successful companies in this area is Fantian Industrial Design, which was founded more than 20 years ago and has won many international design awards.

It invented a robot that could act as a museum or exhibition guide, that would respond to you in whatever language you spoke and take you around the exhibits.

"If you spoke to it in Cantonese or English, it would speak back to you in the language you used," says Li Chunwei, the company's 46-year-old chief executive officer.

As of Friday, some 2,652 companies had registered in Shenyang to join the Free Trade Zone, where business support is available and they will have less red tape than on the outside.

According to Yang Fan, a coordinator at the FTZ's government affairs services center, many applicants are from young people.

"Many young people straight out of college want to start their own enterprises. Unlike their parents' generation they won't just take a job, but want to do something that interests them."

Most people I spoke with were welcoming of this initiative but with the amount of private capital already flooding into the city anyway from property giant Dalian Wanda Group and others for new retail and hotel developments, there is a general feeling of things being on the up anyway.

Those looking for parallels with the despair in some parts of Donald Trump's very own Rust Belt base may find themselves disappointed.

Contact the writer at andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn