Analysis | Do China’s theme parks really hold the ticket to tourism dollars?
Evergrande is the latest developer to be piling into building theme parks, but is the country ready for this surfeit of large, expensive entertainment venues?
Chinese tycoon Hui Ka-yan, whose businesses span residential properties and football clubs, has become the latest developer to pile into building theme parks, aiming to stake out a piece of the country’s US$610 billion tourism industry.
Hui’s China Evergrande Group last month unveiled its 50 billion yuan (US$7.3 billion) Children’s World in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha, the first of a string of theme parks across the country. His parks will use characters from China’s deep trove of myths, legends and literary masterpieces to populate their “children-oriented, all-indoor, all-season” playgrounds.
The park, aimed squarely at Walt Disney’s Shanghai Disneyland park and Comcast Corp’s Universal theme park in Beijing, is also built to impress, with a price tag that is 47 per cent more than the Magic Kingdom in China.
Evergrande’s ambitions do not end at Changsha, with similar parks planned for Guizhou’s provincial capital of Guiyang, Kaifeng in Henan, two more in Jiangsu province – within hours’ drive from Shanghai – and an Ocean Park in Qidong in Jiangsu province.
The surfeit of theme parks in China is raising questions as to whether Evergrande, whose financial leverage at 12.1 is double its closest industry peer, is making the appropriate strategic move.