Saipan in the Marianas has problems of its own and is working on the idea of special economic zones. In doing that it is getting China to help. In a newspaper article on the subject comes a summary of the situation and a quick history of China’s zones:

Between 1980 and 1984, China established special economic zones (SEZs) in Shantou, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai in Guangdong Province and Xiamen in Fujian Province and designated the province of Hainan a special economic zone. Early Chinese business concerns in the CNMI are traceable to these zones.

In 1984, China opened 14 coastal cities to overseas investment in Dalian, Qinhuangdao, Tianjin, Yantai, Qingdao, Lianyungang, Nantong, Shanghai, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Zhanjiang, and Beihai.

In 1985, it established more economic zones in the Liaodong Peninsula, Hebei Province (which surrounds Beijing and Tianjin), Shandong Peninsula, Yangtze River Delta, Xiamen-Zhangzhou-Quanzhou Triangle in southern Fujian Province, Pearl River Delta, and Guangxi.

In 1990 the State Council opened the Pudong New Zone in Shanghai to overseas investment.

Economic characteristics of these decisions are represented as ‘4 principles’:

* Primary reliance on foreign capital on construction
* Formation of local-foreign joint ventures and partnerships first but allowing wholly foreign-owned enterprises
* Export-oriented products
* Resource utilization, production and distribution activities are driven by market forces

It goes on from there to explain how China has now opened what is effectively a zone in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Source: Saipan Tribune

Beijing Yanqi Economic Development Area is now working with Beijing Great Wall investment Development to increase the number of companies within the zone. All the necessary facilities to accommodate the establishment and growth of business are already in place. It is now ready to expand.

The zone was established in April of 1992 with the approval of Beijing Municipal Government. In December 2000 the government decided to accredit this area as one of the key industrial development zones under the direct jurisdiction of the municipality.

The area has a total planned area of 1,493 hectares and incudes the Beijing Yanqi Economic Development Zone Beijing Fengxiang Science & Technology Development Zone and Beijing Jingwei Industrial Zone. It is 55 kilometers drive from the urban district, 35 kilometers from Beijing Capital International Airport, and 170 kilometers from Tianjin Harbor.

So far more than 300 production enterprises have based their businesses in the area including more than 70 foreign owned enterprises coming from 17 countries or regions.

The Administrative Committee of Beijing Yanqi Economic Development Area has authorized Beijing Great Wall investment Development to develop, sell and transfer the right of land use of the zone.
Source: Invest Beijing

Basically, cloud computing is an approach to a shared IT infrastructure in which large pools of computer systems are linked together to provide IT services.

Since it accesses ‘virtual’ resources, cloud computing is not limited by the power and capabilities of local or remote computers.

For zones cloud computing is almost an ideal configuration.

Think of a zone as supplying water, electricity and other services. Now add computing. That is cloud computing which offers a simplified, centralized platform for use when needed. It lowers costs, makes the computer you access as powerful as you wish and saves on energy.

At  Wuxi Tai Hu New Town Science and Education Industrial Park, tenants, mostly startup software companies, are now able to access an entire IT infrastructure by plugging in their computers.

The industrial park worked with IBM to create a cloud-computing center, which it hosts for its tenants. (On May 14 we reported that it was planned to happen. Now it is reality. It is set in one of the most scenic parts of China and care has been taken not to disturb the surroundings.)

Cloud computing is now part of the industrial park’s infrastructure, along with heat, lights and water.

For software startups, this means lower costs in developing products. They avoid buying and operating their own servers, applications or tools and pay only for the IT services they actually use.
Source: Reseller News

China’s top legislator, Wu Bangguo, has urged Tianjin, the port city near to Beijing, to speed up development to become an economic hub in the country’s north.

Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, told officials to strive for better financial services and modern, high-end business functions at the Tianjin Binhai New Area, a pilot for many of the country’s new economic and financial policies.

He visited a bonded zone at the area and called for more efforts to  build Tianjin into a world logistics and shipping center.

Wu Bangguo had taken a ride on the Beijing-Tianjin express railway, which was on a month-long trial with a designed speed exceeding 300 km per hour, before arriving at Tianjin. He called for faster development of the country’s railway system.
Source: China.com

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

A new coastal city will be built in Caofeidian, an industrial zone in North China on the Bohai Sea.

DHV, an engineering consultancy, has been commissioned, together with the Chinese planning institute Qinghua and the Arup consultancy from the UK, to carry out a coastal and urban development project in China.

The coastal city is to be built on an area of 150 square km to provide space for one million residents. Included in its concept is an island and a lagoon.

The concept allows for the creation of fresh groundwater in a sustainable manner for use in the city’s green spaces.

Because of the coastal location in a salt-water area, and because of the limited rainfall in the north of China, there is little fresh water available for the future inhabitants. Thus one of the project’s challenges is to capture and recycie fresh water in as a sustainable manner as possible.

The city’s construction will begin in 2009 next to an industrial port comparable in size to that of the Port of Rotterdam. (And the technology will be similar to that used in the Wadden Sea, Holland and Denmark, part of which is shown in our illustration.)

Source: RedOrbit

From a site called The Lawyer Blog we get a glimpse of the way in which companies are encouraged to invest in the development of assorted zones.

‘Enterprises that were established on Hainan Island and that were engaged in the development and operation of infrastructure such as ports, wharfs, airports, highways, railways, power stations, coal mines, water supplies, etc., and in agricultural development and operations, where their operating periods were 15 years or more, were:

Exempt from income tax from the first through the fifth years starting from the first profitable year
Subject to 50% of the applicable income tax rates in the sixth through the tenth years.’

Which is an amazing deal and shows why industry blossomed in all of the zones around China and why a lot of unauthorized zones popped up.

The rest of this report consists of variations on this theme.

The information seems go have come from KPMG Huazhen, a Sino-foreign joint venture in the People’s Republic of China and a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International, a Swiss cooperative.

More information by clicking HERE.
Source: The Lawyer Blog

Development zones are named according to their different focuses, like ‘economic and technological development zone’, ‘economic development zone’, ‘high-tech industries development zone’ and ’science and technology park’.

There are also development zones at different levels depending on their supervising institutions, ranging from ‘national’ development zones to ‘provincial’ and ‘municipal’ ones. Development zones are often divided into several sections.

The central government has organized several campaigns to check development zones and the unqualified ones or those with poor performances are cancelled.

* From July 2003 to December 2006, the number of development zones were reduced from 6,866 to 1,568.
* Their total area was cut from 38,600 square kilometers to 9,949 square kilometers.

In the Law on Urban and Rural Planning approved by the lawmakers in October 2007, it was stipulated that no development zone should be set-up outside the established plan for the city layout.

Meanwhile, the urban infrastructure of the Chinese cities has been stepped up in the last three decades. And most of them are now very investor-friendly. Much more on this HERE.

The author, Sun Shiwen, is a professor at College of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tongji University.
Source: China View

SDIC Communications, a subsidiary of the State Development and Investment Corporation (SDIC), and Netherlands-based Royal Vopak will invest RMB7 billion ($1.02 billion) in a commercial oil reserve project in Hainan province.

It will be in the Yangpu Economic Development Zone in Hainan and the project will involve the construction of a public oil terminal for crude and oil product containing:

Two 300,000-ton berths
Two 100,000-ton berths
Two 50,000-ton berths

There will also be a commercial oil storage base covering an area of 500 million square meters.

China is building four levels of crude oil reserves. Besides a strategic crude oil reserve base built by both central and local governments, commercial oil reserves by large oil companies as well medium and small ones also constitute an important part of the total reserves.
Source: China Daily

The port city of Dalian has launched a set of new policies to attract more IT talent to the region.

Currently, there are over 60,000 IT professionals working in more than 700 IT companies in Dalian.

Xia Deren, mayor of Dalian, said, ‘If we can achieve an annual output value of 100 billion yuan in 2018, we will need 300,000 to 500,000 IT professionals. Obviously, there is a huge talent shortage.’

Dalian intends to build public facilities for training institutions, construct apartments for IT workers in the city, and provide subsidies for senior professionals in the industry. All to allow the further development of the Dalian Hi-tech Industrial Zone.

Xia Deren, mayor of Dalian, said, ‘The software and IT service outsourcing sector is developing rapidly in Dalian. However, the lack of talent is becoming a serious problem which restricts this development.’

The city’s software sector has on average seen an annual 68.2% rise over the last decade. Last year, its software sales revenue reached RMB21.5 billion ($3.14 billion), while the exports rose to $720 million.

Xia Deren described the initiative as ‘an extra-ordinary measure taken by the local government’.
Source: China Daily