After five years of construction, an initial area of eight square kilometers of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City is essentially complete.
This collaborative project between China and Singapore for an environmentally friendly and sustainable city has been designated as the first “National green development model zone.” With its rows of buildings weaving among the trees and the lush greenery, the project reveals a rare elegance and beauty for a northern Chinese city.
But a certain embarrassment and puzzlement lie behind the leafy appearance. The Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City is a virtual ghost town because it has yet to draw in people and businesses.
The plan for this eco-city is to include a national animation park, a national audiovisual park, a green industry park, an ecological technology park, as well as an information technology park. The idea is to attract companies working in the new energy and new materials sector, accompanying technology research and development, animation and creative industries, education and training as well as modern service industries.
The eco-city is scheduled to be built over the course of a decade on a 30-square-kilometer stretch of wasteland, and ultimately could welcome 350,000 inhabitants. It’s set to be a “new type of eco-city with 100% green buildings.” Five years on, as Singapore’s Emeritus Senior Minister, Goh Chok Tong, puts it, the eco-city has gone from the “adolescent” period into the “adult” stage.
But only 4,000 inhabitants live in the finished district so far. And the 1,000 or so companies registered in the city are mostly small and micro businesses — not enough to support the entire eco-city development.
In an ordinary Chinese city, each square kilometer of constructed area accommodates 10,000 people. By that measure, the Tianjin eco-city should be home to 80,000 residents by now. But there are fewer actual resident is smaller than there are construction workers on site — around 6,000.
Inconvenience of transport is the first problem. Whether you are coming from downtown Tianjin or from the Binhai New Area — an area east of Tianjin on the coast and part of the Bohai Economic Rim, destined to replicate the economic development of Pudong in Shanghai and Shenzhen — it isn’t at all easy. Just like other new towns, the eco-city’s residents are suffering the pain of being a fledgling town.
The city’s problem isn’t limited to imperfect transport facilities either. It is situated between two of Tianjin’s districts, Hangu and Tanggu, which have long been bases for heavy chemical industry and are both deeply affected by pollution.
The planned eco-city has an area of three square kilometers of wastewater reservoir, which has endured 40 years of industrial and agricultural pollution. Even though a green landscape transformation is planned and this area will eventually be turned into a large environmental theme park, the pincer effect from Hangu and Tanggu’s heavy chemical pollution is not a trifle affair.
According to the eco-city’s official data, the town has already attracted more than 1,000 businesses with a total registered capital of 70 billion CNY (11.5 billion USD). They are mostly companies in animation, clean technology, and information technology, but the majorities of them are small businesses.
The government is also trying to attract people here. This includes personal income tax incentives for personnel with required expertise when they purchase homes here.
In addition, the eco-city is providing full and free compulsory education facilities to school-aged children. Not only will the school buses and the lunches be free, the tuition will be subsidized. “That’s about 130,000 CNY [21,300 USD] of savings for a child’s education from kindergarten to secondary school,” one local resident says.
Tianjin eco-city’s dilemma is in no way an isolated case in China. Nearly 300 Chinese cities have put forward the goal of building green areas. Unfortunately, just as worldwide standards for eco-cities are still debatable, some of China’s green projects are turned into mere real estate projects by unscrupulous developers. That’s the case in the China Zhiching Eco-city in the southern Yunnan province. Meanwhile, the uncompleted Tangshan Caofeidian Eco-city, another Bohai Economic Rim development project, has simply come to a standstill.
Also, despite it being a national-level demonstration model set to be replicated, the Tianjin Eco-city seems to be at a crossroads right now.
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After five years of construction, an initial area of eight square kilometers of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City is essentially complete.
