CRD: Fun and Games

From heavy industry to light-hearted fun, Shougang steelworks on the brink of a new future.

    THE Shijingshan District in western Beijing was once laced with steel, the product of a company under the Shougang Group whose work once accounted for over 60 percent of the entire district's GDP. However, under a clean-up plan for the capital city the group moved its highly polluting iron & steel productions to the neighboring Hebei Province by the end of 2010. Shijingshan has since transformed itself into an industrial estate of the Culture and Recreation District (CRD).

    In fact, the district government put forward this goal seven years ago. To that end, office buildings with high-end commercial value have been going up almost constantly, covering an area of 20 million square meters today. A growing number of enterprises engaged in cultural, creative and high-tech services are agglomerating here; it is predicted they will bring in investments of over RMB 200 billion and achieve the transformation and upgrading of the economic structure of western Beijing.

    At present, the district has over 2,700 creative cultural enterprises, employing around 30,000 people. Their business lines run the whole gamut of the hi-tech entertainment industry, including on-line gaming, cell-phone games, 3G service, animation, digital music and digital publication. Preeminent names include Changyou.com, LineKong Entertainment, Hualu Culture, Shenbi Animation, baofeng.com and Oak Pacific Interactive. With the accelerated removal of non-creative trades, the 8.56-sq-km factory site is set to boost creative industries to a production value of over RMB 100 billion per year.

    The under-construction China Animation and Game City is a national demonstration project for animated film and electronic game industries. Launched in 2009, it is slated to extend over 1.2 million square meters, of which 200,000 square meters will be former factory buildings of the steelmaker Shougang. This space will house a theme park, trade management center, research and production facilities, business services platform, offices, hotels and living areas. In the past the people who worked here were steelworkers, but from now on it will be the headquarters of designers creating and riding the trends of the times in the complex information and cultural fields.

    As the pillar industry in CRD, Shijingshan's digital entertainment industry will definitely attract media enterprises from all over the world. All of the top 10 Chinese online-gaming companies have chosen to headquarter or set up branch offices in the district, and currently there are more than 700 companies at work on online games, animations or digital media products. Many, like Changyou.com Ltd., a subsidiary of Sohu.com Inc., are doing well; the online game operator and developer was listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market in April 2009, the first IPO (initial public offering) on NASDAQ since November 2008 amid the financial crisis.

    Among leaders in high and new technology, the new enterprises on the block are famous cultural and creative entities such as Novel-Supertv and Xinbao.com. Admission negotiations are also underway for industry heavyweights like Technicolor and Hanergy Holding Group.

    So far a number of TV programs, animated films and video games with national resonance have made their way to the screen from Shijingshan CRD. Among them are a 3D version of the Chinese classic Three Kingdoms, and the 50-episode TV drama Dream of Red Chambers, the latest re-working of the 18th century classic novel. Internationally acclaimed 3D film The King of Milu Deer won the Perron of Crystal Award at the 2010 International 3D Stereo Film & Technology Festival. Adventures in Character Kingdom bagged the prize for best educational film-foreign language at the International Family Film Festival.