After the May 12 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province, wives would ask their husbands who had to go to Chengdu on business to take biscuits, instant noodles and water because they believed the city must have been battered by the quake and did not have enough food or clean water.
As a matter of fact, about one month after the quake, cinemas, museums, libraries, concert halls, restaurants and bars in Chengdu had reopened and were back to normal.
The average occupancy rate of Chengdu’s star-rated hotels has risen to 60 percent and some have even reached 80 percent, higher than before the quake, said Deng Gongli, chief of the city’s tourism administration.
The city’s real estate, tourism, investment and retail sale sectors have also picked up the pieces.
In June, sales at famous retailers in the city such as Wangfujing Department Store, Ito-Yokado, Suning Appliance and GOME Electrical Appliances Holdings picked up, reaching between 80 and 90 percent of their pre-quake levels.
Twenty-three foreign-funded enterprises have registered in Chengdu after the earthquake, with an investment of nearly US$134 million.
Zhou Mi, deputy chief of the Chengdu committee for the promotion of investment, said: “Chengdu remains the commercial center of southwestern China.”
Ge Honglin, mayor of Chengdu, describes Chengdu as a vital economic hub, an inland city with great potential for economic growth as China promotes the development of its western areas.
Land of abundance
Chengdu is traditionally known as the “land of abundance” thanks to the construction of Dujiangyan, the world’s oldest irrigation project still in operation.
Two millennia ago, the Chengdu plain suffered from incessant flooding of Minjiang, a tributary of the Yangtze River, during the summer, while it was stricken with drought in the winter.
Li Bing, governor of Sichuan at the time, started harnessing the river by launching the Dujiangyan Irrigation Project around 256 BC.
When the project was completed, it fed a grid of canals that irrigated 160,000 hectares of arable land on the Chengdu plain. That area has since increased to 670,000 hectares.
The plain has stayed more or less free of floods and drought for more than 2,000 years, and has earned Sichuan the reputation of being a “land of abundance”. The Chengdu plain has remained one of China’s most important agricultural regions for centuries.
In the absence of a dam, experts have hailed the project as one of the world’s most impressive hydraulic engineering projects.
Together with Mount Qingcheng, the project was listed as a World Cultural Heritage Site in 2000 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Mount Qingcheng, 16 km from Dujiangyan, which is known as “the most tranquil place under heaven,” is the birthplace of Taoism, China’s only indigenous religion.
Chengdu has been a land of abundance throughout history because of its developed agriculture and lack of conflict. Located in the Sichuan Basin and surrounded by rolling mountains, invading troops found Sichuan inaccessible in ancient times.
The city is famous for pandas, romantic poets, spicy hotpot and, more recently, bars and a relaxed atmosphere.
“It is a mix of Frankfurt, Paris and Chicago,” Mayor Ge said.
Ge, a former vice-president of Shanghai-based Baosteel Group, one of China’s largest State-owned enterprises, says his last job trained him to think like an entrepreneur. In fact, the Shanghai native has on many occasions acted as Chengdu’s main PR man.
He has jumped on opportunities to promote the city to foreign investors, attending the American Chamber of Commerce in China’s annual dinner last year, the only mayor to be present. At the 30th Anniversary of the Canada-China Business Council, he gave a lecture and held several meetings with Canadian businesspeople.
Ready for change
Ge is confident that as the world gets increasingly flat, economically speaking, inland Chinese cities such as Chengdu will play an increasingly important role in China’s economic development. For the past several decades, coastal cities have flourished thanks to convenient transportation. Now, as modern technology and industry play a more important role, inland cities are in a good position to develop.
Ge is trying to prepare Chengdu for this change.
The city’s greatest advantage, he says, is human resources. While factories in many coastal cities suffer a shortage of skilled workers, Ge says Chengdu has made vocational education one of the top priorities of the city’s policymaking.
“I am really concerned about training ‘grey collar’ and ‘blue collar’ workers,” he says.
In addition to stipends from the central government, the local government offers extra subsidies to workers and their children living in the Chengdu suburbs so they can receive technical training. The subsidy will cover all school costs, and in some cases, even family living expenses.
The local government encourages high school students to attend vocational schools if they fail to enter college. In December, the city spent 350 million yuan (US$51 million) to build a vocational school. The school, which will begin recruiting students in September, plans to send over 10,000 technicians per year to Chengdu and beyond.
Chengdu aims to become a base for the information technology, automotive and food processing industries. A vast number of skilled workers will be needed to fill the gap. According to its initial plan, the school will offer training courses and cooperate with enterprises to supply talent to enterprises.
A clean city
Apart from the talent pool, Chengdu is trying to build itself into a place that is suitable to live in.
Ge is proud that nearly all foreign embassies have situated their offices in western China in Chengdu. “They chose it because they feel comfortable living here,” he explains, adding that Chengdu aims to be one of the cleanest cities in China.
According to Ge, almost all the buses and taxies in the city burn gas instead of oil to reduce pollution. By 2009, the city expects to safely burn all the rubbish, instead of using landfills. It has also moved major factories out of the city, and is generating electricity with water, instead of burning coal.
In 2007, the city government spent more than 5 billion yuan to build over 30 sewage water processing facilities. Efforts to improve air quality have also paid off: 311 days last year had good air quality. The egret, a rare bird that had long been unseen in the city due to heavy pollution, has recently returned, according to a CCTV report.
“We want to be the city with the best environment in China, and I think we are well on the way to achieving this,” Ge says.
The city’s GDP reached 332 billion yuan in 2007, up 15.8 percent year-on-year, while the per capita income of urban residents surpassed $4,000. Ge aims to increase the disposable income of urban residents by 8 percent, and rural residents by 10 percent annually.
Ge says strong foundations have already been laid, and that Chengdu’s future looks bright.
“When you have the human resources and a suitable place for people to live, enterprises will come and see whether there is a market here for them,” Ge says.