A giant, 63m blue whale shark statue towers over the world’s largest aquarium, which is on a Chinese island that is being promoted as a test ground for reforms aimed at encouraging domestic consumption as the driver of economic growth.
Hengqin Island is just across the Pearl River from Shenzhen, the boom town on the border with Hong Kong that was designated a special economic zone 35 years ago.
At the time, Shenzhen was a fishing village. Now, foreign investment and a freer capitalist economy have turned it into an export powerhouse with a population of more than 10 million and kilometers of high-rise buildings.
Photo: AFP
Yet in the face of a long-term slowdown in growth, China is looking to refocus its economy to one where expansion is driven by domestic consumption rather than infrastructure investment and overseas trade.
Hengqin, also a special economic zone, is being developed as a test bed for a new kind of reform said to stretch even to punching holes through the country’s “Great Firewall” of Internet censorship.
Now largely fields and scrubland, the island in Guangdong Province is intended to be developed into a hub for education, creative industries and tourism, with theme parks, hotels and restaurants tapping the swelling wallets of China’s new middle class.
The aquarium at the US$5 billion Chimelong Ocean Kingdom holds a stupendous 49 million liters of water — certifying it as the world’s largest by Guinness World Records when it opened in March — held back by a cinema screen-sized window bathing spectators in blue light.
A rainbow of sea creatures from tiny yellow croakers, blue sailfish and lumbering sharks drifted past as 11-year-old visitor Wu Junfeng and his mother looked on, clutching their 300 yuan (US$50) tickets.
“It’s huge! There’s fish and turtles!” Wu said.
Local officials offering a raft of tax breaks say they have attracted 250 billion yuan in investment since the project was launched in 2008.
“We have even more special policies than the special economic zones” such as Shenzhen, Hengqin New Area Administrative Committee Chief Niu Jing (牛敬) said. “Hengqin’s position is unique, with clear advantages, being a neighbor of Macau and Hong Kong.”
The British ex-colony is one of Asia’s key financial hubs, while the former Portuguese enclave, just a few minutes’ drive down the coast from Hengqin, is the world’s most lucrative gambling center.
It attracts millions of visitors from China’s mainland, where casinos are banned, and has annual receipts seven times higher than Las Vegas.
Yet Hengqin still has a long way to go. The island has fewer than 10,000 permanent residents — officials say there will be more than 250,000 by 2020 — and the wide highway to Chimelong Ocean Kingdom passes dozens of half-finished apartment blocks.
The promised reforms are also a work in progress.
Analysts say that China’s tight censorship system — most notable in the government’s blocks on foreign Web sites — and close control of universities stifle creativity.
Hengqin officials claim to be relaxing limits on freedom of speech to burnish the island’s credentials as a center for education and culture.
Residents will “have unrestricted Internet access, and enjoy social and political rights as they do in Macau,” the government-run China Daily said last year.
The Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, said officials had submitted a plan to make Hengqin “the first region on the Chinese mainland where local residents can skirt the firewall and get access to blocked Web sites, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.”
However, the prohibitions were still in place when foreign reporters visited Hengqin and the local government refused to comment on the proposal’s status.
The University of Macau is building a campus for 15,000 students on the island it says will come under Macanese jurisdiction — which has more robust protections for academic freedom than China.
Nevertheless, under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), Beijing has tightened controls on civil society, the media and Internet in recent months, a crackdown that has apparently spread to Macau after a French academic was reportedly sacked last month after organizing a conference on the tens of millions of deaths caused by a 1950s famine blamed on former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and party policies.
Island authorities have also promised reforms to China’s party-controlled legal system, where corruption has long unnerved investors.
Karen Kwan, an analyst for Hong-based Kim Eng Securities who has visited the island several times, said she was “cautiously optimistic” that it could cash in on the millions thronging to Macau.
Early housing sales have gone well and prices have risen despite a nationwide property slowdown, she said, but its target customers gave it mixed reviews.
“We think it’s more fun than Macau,” 21-year-old advertising student Sylvia Liang said as she watched white beluga whales whistle while wetsuited attendants balanced on their backs in an auditorium at the aquarium complex.
However, Wu preferred to be among the high-rollers down the coast.
“My parents usually go to Macau to gamble,” he said. “So they leave me alone.”
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