New Free Trade Zone Improves Shanghai

Jobs, employment, and opportunity are some of the most important issues for both people living here, and the government and the superlatives have helped create the jobs. Shanghai has enjoyed years of growth thanks to two international class airports, one a Hongqiao in the west and the other next to the sea in Pudong. While Beijing’s new airport is magnificent, the Shanghai system is breathtaking. The Shanghai superlatives have included two, new train stations, including fast trains that speed across the Mainland. Hard to see at street level, but the Shanghai Subway, the Metro spreads across the entire city with 12 lines and more than 230 subway stations.

 

 

 

Factor in the highway system, the new Yanshan Deep-Water Port, and the construction and operation of the Shanghai Expo, you see there have been large numbers of jobs and projects available more than 20 years. We haven’t even added the construction of an entire skyline of mega skyscrapers, malls, and entire cities of high-rise apartment complexes. It all adds up to about 23 million people, who need work to do, to pay the mortgage, keep the car on the road, and send kids to school.
Two years ago, I heard people talking about, “where’s the opportunity in Shanghai?” It was just after the Shanghai Expo, but more recently, people are more concerned about an on-going job in Shanghai. It’s not surprising that the leadership in Shanghai would look for new areas to create job and opportunity in a more sustainable way. The government in Shanghai and Beijing announced policies that might make Shanghai more like the economic power houses of Singapore and Hong Kong. If the policies roll out, current Free Trade Areas already working in Shanghai would have expanded law, policy, and reach to bring more business to Shanghai (click for story). For China, free trade areas are prototypes that truly gated-in, and available for both inspection and observation.

Based on the plans for the upgraded free trade areas, finance will a large factor giving Shanghai a jump on a possible new hard currency – the RMB. As a free trade area, goods can come and go, be allocated and assembled without paying any kind of tax duty. If it works, Shanghai will get a boost from logistics, and manufacturing. It might recapture jobs they lost to the interior – places like Urumqi (automotive), and Chengdu (electronics and auto). David Barboza writing for the NYT, July 4, 2013 provides an excellent sketch of what the goal is.

What the final outcome, if it ever comes to final, we simply don’t know. The question is: How to be part of it, or even better, how to benefit from it.

 

项目简介:

上海财经大学-美国韦伯斯特大学合作举办工商管理专业(MBA)硕士学位项目创办于1996年,是国内最早开办的中外合作学位教育项目之一,已连续17年招生。该项目以培养具有全球视野和跨文化管理的复合型商业领袖为目标,严格按照国际标准进行课程设置和教学管理,同步全美商学院最新课程体系,授课师资中外籍教授占比达到50%以上,实行小班全英文授课,并通过建立与践行九周学期制、课程注册制、终身学习制三大制度保证教学质量。项目开展至今,已累计为国家经济发展培养了近1600名各类杰出人才,已然成长为国内最具社会影响力的国际MBA项目之一。

 

* 2013年上财商学院国际MBA秋季热招中!本年度最后一次考试:2013年11月24日,开学时间:2014年1月4日
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