Despite 104pc growth, China’s ‘Manhattan’ remains cautionary tale of economic zeal
A decade ago, officials embarked on a plan to turn a marshland in the port city of Tianjin into a world-class financial centre. Yujiapu has a high-speed rail, malls stocked with Japanese goods and luxury car dealerships. All that’s missing are people.
Few places better illustrate the story of China’s growth over the last decade than Yujiapu district in Tianjin.
Officials hoped it would the mainland’s answer to Manhattan. A construction spree was unleashed in 2006 and dozens of skyscrapers grew out of the marshland. Some buildings are finished and partly occupied, some remain under construction, while others look abandoned.
A few signs of life are emerging – a high-speed rail station is running, cutting travel time to Beijing to about an hour. The district was given the status of a free-trade zone last year, allowing consumers to buy imported Maserati cars and Japanese napkins. Chinese businesses, from Turkish shisha vendors to software training organisers, are tiptoeing into the empty buildings.
But the area, which local authorities claim recorded 104 per cent economic growth in the first half, sits largely idle.
What happened in Yujiapu has been replicated thousands of times across China when local authorities allot land and funds to build towns where nothing existed, and expecting people will come. Up to May, the mainland had created at least 3,500 new towns and districts – enough space to accommodate 3.4 billion people and a morass of overcapacity and unpaid debts, according to Xinhua.