A Tale of Two Cities: High-Profile Events Push China’s Urban Development
Ling Li – October 2, 2007


As Beijing counts down to the 2008 Summer Olympics, Shanghai, another modern city on China’s east coast, is gearing up for its own big event: the 2010 World Expo. This marks the first time that developing-country cities will host both high-level world events. Beijing and Shanghai hope the activities will help accelerate their urban development through infrastructure investments, environmental improvement, and public participation.

China’s booming economic growth has led to rapid industrialization and urbanization, as well as to associated damage to human health, natural resources, and the environment. Half of all Chinese people will live in cities by 2010, up from some 44 percent of the population in 2006. But air contamination, lagging environmental infrastructure, and the lack of effective pollution controls remain major challenges to China’s urban environment.

Beijing ploughed nearly 284 billion yuan (US$38 billion) into infrastructure development between 2002 and 2006, nearly double the level of the previous five years. As a result, the city’s rail-based public transportation network has been expanded, and the wastewater treatment rate in the downtown area has reached nearly 90 percent, up from only 42 percent in 2001. The rate of municipal solid waste treatment has increased as well, to some 97 percent. The average ‘green space’ coverage per Beijing resident is some 12 square meters, and the city’s overall green coverage is now nearly 50 percent.

The Olympic Games have become a major force driving Beijing’s economic development, spurring average annual growth of nearly 12 percent over the past five years. But whether such growth can be sustained after the Olympics remains a question, as industries such as tourism, restaurants, financial services, and real estate are expected to face a downturn. “Beijing should take the 2008 Olympic Games as a new start for its city development,” the local government noted in a report to China’s Communist Party. Over the next five years, Beijing aims to transition from a traditional, manufacturing-based economic structure to a new economic model comprising high-tech industry, cultural innovation, and modern services, agriculture, and manufacturing.

The World Expo in Shanghai will last for half a year, compared with the half-month Olympic gala in Beijing. With its theme of urban development (‘better city, better life’), the Expo will demonstrate cutting-edge technologies to improve urban living. “Shanghai is a city still under development, and we need to embrace new concepts for its future,” Vice Mayor Yang Xiong said in a media interview. “Meanwhile, as the host city for the Expo, Shanghai will attract visitors from all over the world, which will provide a great opportunity for Shanghai’s citizens’ economic and social development.”

Shanghai has been taking active measures to create a better urban living environment. These include implementing a 50-percent energy-efficiency standard in all new buildings, creating the world’s first “eco-city” with a minimal ecological footprint on Chongming Island, and launching 10 major citywide energy-saving projects, from renovating electrical devices and adopting “green” lighting to installing sulfur-removal and wastewater treatment equipment in coal-fired power plants. In 2006, the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau invested 40 billion yuan (US$5.3 billion) to improve local environmental infrastructure, with the goal of boosting the municipal wastewater treatment rate above 75 percent and the solid waste treatment rate above 80 percent by 2010.

Another major benefit—and challenge—of these two upcoming events for both Shanghai and Beijing is to improve citizens’ behavior. The Beijing Olympic Committee has launched several campaigns to encourage residents to improve their awareness of personal manners “for Olympic glory”—including not spitting on the road. Shanghai expects the World Expo to open the eyes of its citizens and to inspire innovation, particularly among the city’s youth.

China Watch is a joint initiative of the Worldwatch Institute and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI) and is supported by the blue moon fund.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5383