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Special Report  

Songjiang Anticipates Rail Zone Benefits

By special correspondents REN SHAOMIN & XU HUIYUN

 

An automatic ticket machine. Photos by CFP 

AT eight a.m. on October 25, 2010, the square in front of Songjiang South Station of the Shanghai-Hangzhou High-speed Railway is practically deserted, apart from a few cleaners busily sweeping. A red car drives up to the station. Out gets Shen Bo who hurries to the ticket office. But every one of the 13 windows is closed and showing the sign “temporarily out of service.” Just as he is about to leave, he notices an automatic ticket machine. He goes up and checks it out, inserts a 100-yuan banknote into the slot, and in return gets RMB 33 change and a ticket for the following day from this station to Hangzhou.

Shen Bo works in Songjiang New City, and his wife works in Hangzhou. They live apart, and often shuttle between the two places, but not easily: previously only two trains a day served Songjiang Station, one in the morning and another in the evening. For Shen Bo and his wife, the high-speed railway has shortened the distance between them.

Shen Jianfei sits in his office less than one kilometer from where the high-speed trains drop off and pick up passengers at Songjiang South Station. Though he can neither see nor hear the trains from here, in his mind’s eye crowds of passengers are pouring off the train and making for his business park.

Shen Jianfei is general manager of the Shanghai Cangcheng Creative Culture Development Co., Ltd., and supervises the Cangcheng Shengqiang Film and Television Cultural Park. This is the only cinematic production base in Shanghai, and is located in Songjiang District’s newly planned “High-speed Railway Zone.” The hopes – Shen Jianfei’s and the entire district’s – are riding high on the benefits of the high-speed intercity link.

According to the latest planning, the “Songjiang New City High-speed Railway Zone” will cover 66.8 square kilometers. It extends from the existing Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway in the north, to the northern bank of the Huangpu River in the south, and from the A30 Expressway in the west, to the Jinshan Subline in the east. Centered on Songjiang South Station, the zone will cover Yongfeng, Chedun and Xinbang subdistricts and is linking them to Track Line 9. The zone will push forward development in new- and high-technologies, the environmental protection industry, film and television, trade and logistics, positioning itself as a new magnet for economic growth. Sheng Yafei, secretary of the CPC Songjiang District Committee, believes that the construction of this zone will create new development opportunities for Songjiang New City.

The 3.55-square-kilometer core area of the zone comes under the administration of Yongfeng Subdistrict, which is home to 400 industrial enterprises, including 150 foreign-funded companies. These are energy-inefficient enterprises with modest output and most are on the verge of elimination. With the launching of the new railway-zone plan, Yongfeng Subdistrict is facing immediate removal and rebuilding challenges.

The high-speed link is also expected to bring business opportunities to Shen Jianfei’s cultural park, nestled conveniently in Yongfeng Subdistrict. “The high-speed railway is sure to increase customer traffic, and that’s an additional selling point to attract investors to the park,” says Shen. Every day, there are several film crews working in the Shengqiang Park. Shengqiang’s location is actually superior to that of Hengdian – China’s Hollywood in central Zhejiang – by virtue of its links to several expressways and the high-speed railway.

Convenient transportation is a plus for investors. Shen Jianfei says that since January 2009, when the cultural park began inviting investors, more than 400 film, television and animation enterprises have registered in the park, and their tax contributions in 2010 exceeded RMB 50 million. Songjiang New City is building a high-speed railway business center, and Shen Jianfei is convinced that such support facilities will help attract even more enterprises to this park.

Satellite commerce is slow to pick up however. Old Qiu and his nephew run a peasant’s restaurant on Jinyu Road, less than one kilometer from Songjiang South Station. Since opening one year ago, business has been slack, as there’s no nearby residential area to provide steady customers. Old Qiu takes a close interest in the construction and operation of the new station, hoping it will bring more customers to his door. He hears that residential areas are planned near the railway station, and it was precisely the prospect of large-scale development that he bet his restaurant investment on, promising, “Whatever, I’ll stick it out for another year.”

A few steps from Old Qiu’s restaurant is a snackfood operation run by Mr. Zhang, who is nowhere near as optimistic as his neighbor about the benefits of the new high-speed link for his business. During the actual construction many of the workers involved lived nearby and business was brisk for a while at the snackbar and the neighboring supermarket. But on completion, business slumped. As Zhang sees it, it is usually only white-collar workers and people on business trips who can afford to take high-speed trains; most of them are more likely to go directly into town than stop and patronize a small eatery like his.

Perhaps the most direct beneficiaries will turn out to be those owning property near the station. Feng Guilong, an employee of Yazhou Real Estate Brokerage Office, says the price of houses within three kilometers of Songjiang South Station rocketed in the second half of 2010. Homes in the vicinity originally sold for less than RMB 5,000 per square meter and have now risen to RMB 8,000. Owners are reluctant to sell, anticipating a further rise in value.

VOL.59 NO.12 December 2010 Advertise on Site Contact Us