| Beijing,Shanghai, Guangzhou:Establishing international metropolitan golden triangle |
| 4/20/2006 1:1:0 Beijing CBD |
|
After 1980s, Chinese industri alization and metropolitan process are in the ascendant, however, the total quality and level are below the average rate of the world (50%), even below half rate (80%)of the developed country? Our metropolitan rate is only 30% at present, which means the industrialization and metropolitan progress are the main part of Chinese developing process, or they make a destined path for China.
China is becoming more and more important in the international economic intergration. Developed countries invest more to Chinese market such as coastal and inland markets as a method to stimulate economic growth and restructure their own industrial structure. It has become a strategic importance for the developed countries to invest in the grand China market. In metropolis of China, Zhujiang delta, Changjiang delta, Jingjintang, Liaodong peninsula, Jiaodong peninsula are taking the lead in our social economy. Among them, the most powerful and functional ones are Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. These three metropolis have advantaged superiority, strong agglomeration, leading impact and conditions to become comprehensive international metropolitan cities.
1. Urban groundwork and advantages
For all cities in China, Beijing is the most infectious city in the world. She has the most important function to deal with international affair, the most classic high-tech talents, the most developed network and well-developed basic facilities, integrated industrial structure and famous historical wealth and resources, all of which would contribute the foundation of a modern international metropolis. Beijing is also located at the centre of Northern China and Bohai loop, the centre of the regional economy, and the biggest immigrant city in China.
Shanghai is going into the fast developing period after Pudong's exploitation which brought about opportunities. Solid financial basis and human resources, science and technology advantage, excellent investment environment attract many multinationals and financial organizations. Shanghai is bold to implement strategic adjustment. It is establishing a new financial centre in China, and laying a good foundation for it to be the next international financial centre.
Guangzhou is the economic centre in Southern China and the experimental city unit of many fields (such as Wolden Card Project? ?Integrated reformation project? ?Insurance market?etc. ). The CECF, twice a year, make the international trading reach a higher level year by year. Financial service and international trading already become the domain industry in Guangzhou. Regionally, Guangzhou is close to the metropolitan links composed by Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Marco, which could accelerate the southern Chinese economy to play a more important role in the world economy by way of economic trading and financial connections among Guangzhou, HK and Macao.
2. The Obstacles and Restrictions of Construction
However, the problems still exist. Beijing seems to be a highly internationalized and open city while in fact is much less than expected. The control of human resources flow is not flexible enough, and the commercial networks are in a smaller number with bad service. The 3rd industries in this city are not fully developed. Therefore, the socialization and modernization of the life in Beijing is quite low compared with other international metropolises. The natural resources such as water, lands etc. are in serious shortage. Although the construction of infrastructural facilities are second to none in the nation, it is actually in a poor condition. The quality of the city environment is getting worse and worse, and the industrial structure and population layout cannot sustain the ponderous burden of development. All of these contribute to an overbalance between the allocation of resources and area position in this city. The harmony between the city and natural environment is confronting with great challenge. The plan and construction of CBD need more investment. In addition, the development of export-oriented economy in Beijing is far from being enough; the radiation and service in the city is reducing; and the development of regional town system is unbalanced and the urbanization of nearby towns is at a low level. This is the inadequacy of marketing principle.
Shanghai, as the example during planned economy, used to be greatly limited in its urban development. Now it is in a poor status of being an aged beauty or a hero of the past. The planned economy for a long term has led to the enclosed economy of being big and complete or small and comprehensive. The basic construction and industrial structure are in a mass. There is sharp contrast between management, values, labor quality and excessive superiority. The highly dense human occupancy and buildings, the serious pollution, the crowded transportation, the poor original city plan, and the low speed of integration of the city and the countryside construct the heavy historical burdens to Shanghai. Strictly speaking, Shanghai is not capable to lead the economy and finance in the country for its poor agglomeration and service.
The greatest restriction of Guang-zhou is its cultural circumstance. The economic development hasn?t make Guangzhou a famous cultural city like Beijing and Shanghai. It is a so called cultural desert despite rich flowers and shining gold. Moreover, the serious environment pollution, bad environment protection awareness, difficulty in reconstruction of the old city, the inadequate infrastructural facilities and terrible transportation are all the obstacles that prevent Guangzhou to be an internationalized metropolis.
In a word, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are still far from being developed when compared with other first-class internationalized metropolises because of the limitation of the general development of the whole nation. The modernization and internationalization are in progress and there is a certain distance from being developed.
3. Strategies and Essentials
Cities are the cores of a region and take the central role in terms of functions. If we want to make their influence and radiance to reach the largest extent, blind spots, mistakes and the other obstacles should be taken into whole consideration to do well in the layout and implementation of the cities?positioning. It is no doubt that these three cities should be positioned to be multi-functional and comprehensive international metropolis. Generally speaking, Beijing is better to be built into the centers of international political exchanges, cultures, science and technologies (knowledge economy), tourism and information; Shanghai is suitable to be built into the centers of international finance and economy; and Guangzhou is appropriate to be built into the centers of international trade and finance with the dual features of Chinese characteristics and world's attributes.
International metropolises must exert themselves to set up their own dominant industries and leading programs and attach much importance to the upgrade and optimization of industrial structures and place high emphasis on urban infrastructure construction as well as the growth of the tertiary industry by ascending it to the dominant industry. Furthermore, the primary industry should pay attention to the development of high yielding, good quality and efficiency agriculture and modern profit-making suburban agriculture; the secondary industry should strengthen the development of new hi-tech industries and take the advantage of these new and advanced technologies to reconstruct dominant industries. Beijing is better to make politics, cultures, science and technologies and tourism; Shanghai is suitable to make finance (security, foreign exchange and financing) and economy; Guangzhou is appropriate to make trade and finance (gold, futures and bond), respectively, as the leading industries of the three cities.
Central business district should be established and improved. Central business district (CBD) is the area of a city, in which the business activities and population flows are the most centralized and the traffic is the most convenient, the architectural density is the biggest, the estate price is the highest and the infrastructure construction is the most modern. It is the symbol of the prosperity and development of a metropolis and its attached areas and the core of a city's image project. Seeing from the perspective of urban development and designing, we can say the bigger of a city's scale and the higher of its internationalization, the more distinct characteristics of its CBD's. CBD takes on the functions of a city's heart and is the nerve center of comprehensive social and economic activities of a city and an area. The position of an international metropolis as the center of a region (a country or the world) is mostly realized by the CBD's functions and influences. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou need to highly attach the importance to the constructions of their CBDs by giving prominence to its central business functions, making their CBD's features stand out and changing CBDs into the fountains of a city's prosperity, thus efficiently promoting the high specialization, socialization, internationalization and modernization of a citiy's leading industry i.e. the tertiary industry.
The urban socialization is one of the symbols of an international metropolis's maturation. It means whether the life quality of the city dwellers is good or bad in terms of convenience, comfort, safety and expediency. The higher of a city's socialization, the richer of its strength appears to be as a modern international metropolis. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou should take immediate action to set up all sorts of social security systems, to promote the all-round developments of all social enterprises and to vigorously enhance urban management level and service standards. Social serving functions should be strived for being plural, solid and internationalized and the institutions of providing services are ready and complete. And in order to become an omnipotent metropolis of outstanding social functions, the social environment should be excellent and the social services all-embracing.
To speed up the transnational process of a city, foreign-oriented economy should be made greater efforts to develop so that a metropolis can become the headquarter of international affairs, finance trade, information, operation management and tourism institutions in the regional, national and even international sense as well as an integrated international economic center for concentrated meetings, exhibitions, apartments, commerce, culture, travel and rest. A large number of multinational companies, foreign emigrants, international trade and foreign capital should be held with the purpose of notable international characteristics. As international metropolis, it also needs to build up strong multination enterprises (groups) and financial institutions.
Information Express Way should be constructed. In Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the construction of Information Express Way should be enhanced. The big-city information system, in which some subsystems of city's other parts will be involved, should be constructed and the wide connections with other sites should be made so as to have the multi-level, multi-function, all-sided and modern regional information net, through-the-country net and even the global information net. Thus, the computerization and information of municipal management can be realized, the on-time & real-time information transfer with other big functional cities can become available and finally the share of information and resource can be achieved.
The openness of market is necessary for an international big city. So, we should enhance the openness of the market. Both domestic openness and international openness are required. Meantime, full combination with international practices and international markets should be paid attention to. Under the condition of meeting the principle of permitting entering the market, try to absorb more foreign-capitalized organizations into big cities. In addition, we should enhance the construction of our legal system. An imperfect legal system will be a big hidden trouble for constructing an international big city. Hence, a good social economic order must be established before constructing an international big city. The efficient management and operation of a big city must be based on a sound legal system. No matter an act is related to the government, society, economy or market, for instance, handling international problems, social problems, cultural problems, environmental problems, market problems etc. It must be depend on a sound legal system. Therefore, it is very urgent to work out some foreign-related legal regulations that both meet the international practices and the situations of China as soon as possible.
Realize the alliance effect of Golden Triangle, That means to realize support each other in function and respond each other in advantage and to realize the central effect of a big city. The three big cities should keep reasonable labor division and share each other's knowledge, enhance the exchange between the domestic talents and the international talents, train comprehensive international talents and enhance the culture mixture to establish a real international exchange center. Under the trend of global economic union and regionalization, the arrangement and flow of resources has become smoother, the cooperation between big cities has become a long-term high-level cooperation and the interreaction between each other can be touched more easily. Thus, the transversal powerful flow and big exchange are both necessary and urgent. Facing multi-functional competition and big pressure, to take advantages of each other's strengths through the negotiation and cooperation is necessary for the common development of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The three cities enjoy the same advantage that is the basis of big China. If they can tightly united together to build China brand?and World brand? the free flow of modern and international factors between the three cities can be enhanced and then the international competition power of them can be improved. Union is the most powerful competition. Alliance is the only way to help to realize the share of information and resources, to make the united effect and to quickly have the great target of modernization and internationalization achieved.
Now, in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the foundations of constructing modern international big cities have been fundamentally laid. Although a long way needs to go, they have become pioneers in the modernization and internationalization of China's cities. In the future, there will be a multi-functional and multi-polarization municipal development layout, in which Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou will be the core, the central cities in sea areas and interior areas will be the main connections and the cities along edge ports will be the sub-connections. It can be predicted that under the background of promoting the economy, legal system and policy and uniting the information, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou will realize the high-speed automation and become modern international big cities with Chinese special features based on high requirements depending on self efforts and support of national macro policy.
|
|
|
