44
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Developing China’s Ports
Box 2.6, continued
center, combining entertainment with high-end tourism real estate (CMSK, n.d.). The new city generates income streams that are no longer port related. Today Shenzhen’s per capita GDP is greater than US$30,000. The Shenzhen port-city model has been named “front-port, central-park, back-city” (前港-中区-后城). Since 2017, China Merchants Group has been promoting global replication of this model. It is building specialized industrial new towns in several cities in China,a and has been exploring the possibility of exporting the model overseas under the Belt and Road Initiative to countries such as Djibouti, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Togo.
Although the model has its benefits, it should be noted that the initial development of Shenzhen relied heavily on the existence of Hong Kong SAR, China, in particular the sophisticated logistics services associated with the Port of Hong Kong, at that time one of the world’s largest. In addition, advocates of the Shenzhen model tend to emphasize the property development gains of the “back-city” component of the model, which were also driven to a large extent by the high cost of land in Hong Kong SAR, China. The exceptionally fast growth of Shenzhen has therefore been due to a unique set of circumstances that may be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
a. In 2018, China Merchants Group and Zhanjiang City announced they were cooperating to build a “Beibu Gulf-Shekou” in accordance with this comprehensive new development model.
BOX 2.7
Complexity in port development beyond the city border: The case of Shanghai Shanghai is one of the oldest ports in China. Its general cargo wharves were built a century ago along the Huangpu River, today the city center (map B2.7.1). When the port began to modernize by adding container terminals in the 1980s, these terminals first stretched from the city center to Zhanghuabang near Wusongkou, where the Huangpu meets the Yangtze. To accommodate much larger vessels, the Waigaoqiao area in Pudong New District along the Yangtze became the first port relocation in Shanghai. The terminals were to have a 13-meter draft, the deepest in its jurisdiction. The project came with land to be turned into a new industrial cluster and large-scale urban expansion. Since then, most of the riverside of the Huangpu River has been redeveloped into an eye-catching waterfront put to multiple urban uses.
But by the time Waigaoqiao was completed in 2000, Shanghai had already found it inadequate to meet the national government’s wish for a regional hub that could serve as the core of the future Shanghai International Shipping Center, a regional port system serving the entire Yangtze River Delta. The problem was that the water was not deep enough to accommodate the oceangoing vessels used by major shipping lines. Therefore, it became imperative to build container terminals near Shanghai with a draft of at least 18 meters. Yangshan Port was then built as part of the Port of Shanghai but located on Lesser Yangshan Island (in the municipality of Zhoushan, Zhejiang province), some 100 kilometers from the Shanghai city center. The Yangshan container terminals began operation in December 2005, and some international continued
