A worker rests in front of a billboard displaying an artist's impression of the new business district of Binhai, located in the Yujiapu financial zone on the outskirts of the city of Tianjin, March 2, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/David Gray
TIANJIN, China | Thu Mar 3, 2011 8:40am EST
TIANJIN, China (Reuters) - Yujiapu does not roll off the tongue like Wall Street, but planners in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin hope it soon will.
Round-the-clock construction is transforming muddy ground into what officials boast will be the world's largest financial zone a decade from now.
It's a monument to the ambitions driving China's economic growth and to the sort of risks leaders in Beijing see piling up alongside the country's new skyscrapers.
When they gather for their annual parliament in Beijing starting on Saturday, they will endorse plans to tap the brakes on the economy, a slowdown to keep inflation and debt -- both rising but under control -- from becoming far more troublesome.
But they only need make the one-hour trip to the financial district sprouting up in Tianjin to see how hard-driving local officials, pliant state-owned banks and the soaring aspirations of people seeking a better life are thwarting their designs for slower, steadier growth.
A forest of cranes and the foundations of 12 buildings, the first phase of Yujiapu, rise from the land where Li Guowang once lived. The steelworker's home was destroyed to make way for the development and he was moved to a government-built high-rise compound last year, though without the bitterness that often accompanies such relocations in China.
"If anything, I'd say the new financial zone is too small -- the entire city should be like it," he said, playing with his young daughter in the snowy plaza at the foot of his apartment.
"Hopefully, it will be like a strong light bulb, a single point that will brighten up the rest of the room."
Yet even Li had doubts about how a financial center housing up to 120 buildings, if all goes according to plan, could produce anything to rival his employer, the Tianjin Pipe Corporation.
"What exactly they will do there, I'm not sure. It's not like steel, which you can see and touch. I guess they'll be able to hold lots of business meetings," he said.
CHINA'S FASTEST
Although not about to supplant Shanghai, home of China's main stock exchange, Tianjin has been racing to hone its credentials as a financial hub. In the past three years alone, it has opened the Bohai Commodity Exchange, the Binhai International Equity Exchange, the Tianjin Climate Exchange and the Tianjin Ferroalloy Exchange.
Tianjin's economy grew 17.4 percent last year, the fastest of China's 31 provincial-level areas. While that would have been cause for celebration in the past, the local government has been modest in trumpeting its achievement.
"It has been a historic breakthrough," said Tang Zhongfu, a director on Tianjin Binhai's Development and Reform Commission, a powerful planning agency in the city.
"But we still have to address problems, like the relationship between current growth and long-term growth," he added.
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