中国的下一个建筑工地：建造这个国家

视深圳和上海为竞争对手

中国经济说明它不需要一个经济标志，但是中国官方正让“经济增长的新发动机”加速，让它加入到上海和深圳的高速发展行列中去，而这两个港口城市目前正处于 中国经济转行的最前线。有这样的一长条状地区，工厂无规律的分布其中，在这块土地上还有贫瘠的半荒废的土地，这个地区沿着北部海岸绵延了150公里（90 英里），而现在，这个地区正成为一个比上海或深圳都要大的开发区。同时，设计这个开发区的中央政府已经同意，在这个开发区进行大范围的经济和官僚政治改革 试点。

中国政府对这个近乎于冒险的规划寄予厚望。这个称之为滨海新区的地方，规划的目的是为了让中国北方的发展区变的完整，而这个发展区包括首都北京以及邻近渤 海湾的省份，另外一个目的就是，享受与位于珠江边的深圳和位于长江下游的上海带来的与它们一样的经济繁荣。通过税收的刺激，以及到目前为止远比上海或深圳 便宜的土地，官员们希望这个地区能成为一个实力强劲的制造业区，要能够生产从飞行器和汽车到微芯片和化工品的任何产品。

官员们想让天津市恢复为在共产党兴起前的地位，也就是重新成为中国北方的金融首都。由于计划到2010年让滨海港的集装箱处理能力翻番，滨海港目前已经成 为中国北方最大的港口。这个地区沿着海岸的广袤地带也将被规划为休闲区：一艘旧的前苏联的航空母舰孤零零的固定在一个地方以作为吸引游客的中心事物，而这 个地方正打算成为一个军事主题公园。在这个机堡状的海湾地区，将会有各式各样的时髦样式出现。

建立滨海的行政许可很早前就有了，早在1994年天津领导就建立了这个开发区，但是直到去年，中央政府才给出一个明确的信号，这也意味着这是一个国家的重 大项目，而不在仅仅是地方政府的冒险举措。三月份，作为被中国立法机关采用的五年经济规划中诸多目标中的一个，滨海的发展规划出台了。六月六日，中央政府 的文件公开宣称滨海要成为一个“综合性改革的试验区”。迄今为止，只有上海的标志性开发区浦东新区享受了这种权利，而且浦东新区也不过去年才得到这一权 利。

滨海已经作为中国国家主席胡锦涛和总理温家宝（他自己就是天津当地人）所中意的开发区出现，正如20世纪80年代的深圳之于已故中国领导人邓小平，以及浦 东之于胡锦涛的前任江泽民。深圳毗邻香港，而上海在共产党兴起前是资本主义乐园，在设立对外资实行特殊政策的地区的时候，它们理所当然的入选了。在北方， 由于受共产主义老旧思想的影响比较深，以及竞争（不仅只在天津和北京之间存在）所造成的隔阂，选择一个地方作为新型的经济发展区和投资中心已经被证明有相 当的难度。很明显，天津市市长戴相龙，一位

从2002年开始管理这座城市的前中央银行行长，他在其中的游说起了作用。

对滨海来说，最近的引人注目的情形是，尽管官方腔调说要促使更多的资金投向这个国家欠发达的中部，西部以及东北地区，实际情况是沿海地区仍然最能吸引资金 的地区。由于把滨海视为改革试验田，中央政府也发出了信号，要滨海不要害怕最近公众对经济改变方面的批评，而经济改变这其中就包括由外国投资者引起的损 害。滨海地区希望到2010年能吸引另外一个200亿美元外资投资到这个地区，与之形成对比的是从1994年到今年年末这段时期吸引了159亿美元（其中 的大部分是投资在天津经济技术开发区，一个很久就建立的包含于滨海的外资自由投资区，在这个开发区内，象摩托罗拉，丰田和三星都建立了规模庞大的工厂）。 不顾对经济过热的担忧，滨海的目标是在下一个五年计划里让每年GDP增长率达到17%。在这个五年内，滨海同时将投资150亿美元进行基础设施建设。

滨海现在正仔细盘算着“综合性改革”这个包裹里的诸多细节问题。天津市市委副书记皮黔生，他同时也是滨海的给人以热情印象的领导，说中央政府很可能在下月 批准他们的计划。除开精简官僚机构的努力，政治改革并不处于议事日程的最高地位。中国领导人对一些大学教授给于深圳更大的自由度进行民主试验的呼吁持谨慎 态度，与深圳这个离北京1900公里（1200英里）的南方城市相比，和北京的距离短的多的滨海，几乎不大可能成为政治改革的先锋。

滨海官员更愿意谈论金融方面（在风险投资和私人投资进入银行业方面有更大的自由度）以及他们称之为“土地管理”方面的改革。这是一种对当今中国经济改革诸 多热点争论问题中的其中一个问题的委婉说法，也就是，能否以及如何把农村土地变为可买卖的商品。作为一名引人注目的共产党的高级官员，皮先生说：土地私有 化是有可能的，尽管他暗示这种情况不可能马上发生。北京的一位政策研究者晓金诚（音译）说，与浦东和深圳只是简单的给一点少的可怜补偿就从农民那里征地的 做法不同，滨海正在考虑采取一种有别于它们的措施，滨海改革可能赋予农民卖掉自用土地的权利，并且允许他们从中获益。

在水供应这个问题上，以市场为导向的改革不会那么明显。与中国的很多北方城市一样，天津饱受水资源短缺的困扰。滨海不但使用成本不菲的净化海水，而且也依赖于从长江流域调过来的水，这个调水工程规模非常庞大同时耗资也巨大。看来很大可能是政府而不是工业承担这个成本。

翻译：flybaby12

原文：Building the nation：China's next building site

Planning a rival for Shenzhen and Shanghai

ITS economy shows few signs of needing one, but China is revving up what officials call a “new engine of growth” to supplement the dynamos of Shanghai and Shenzhen, the two port cities at the forefront of the country's economic transformation. A strip of industrial sprawl and barren semi-wasteland that stretches for 150km (90 miles) along the northern coast is being turned into a development zone far bigger than either Shanghai's or Shenzhen's. And its planners have been given the central government's blessing to experiment with a wide range of economic and bureaucratic reforms.

The government has high hopes for this venture. The Binhai New Area, as the zone is called, is intended to help a swathe of northern China, including the capital, Beijing, and the provinces around the Bohai gulf, enjoy the same kind of economic boom generated by Shenzhen in the Pearl River delta and by Shanghai in the lower reaches of the Yangtze. With the help of tax incentives and (for now) far cheaper land than either Shanghai or Shenzhen, officials hope to make the zone a manufacturing powerhouse for everything from aircraft and cars to microchips and chemicals.

They want Tianjin city to regain its pre-Communist era status as north China's financial capital. Binhai's port, already north China's largest, is due to double its container-handling capacity by 2010. The zone has also allocated an expanse of coast for recreation: an old Soviet aircraft carrier is moored in one desolate spot as the centrepiece of what is intended to become a military theme park. It offers fashion shows in its cavernous hangar bay.

The green light for Binhai has been a long time coming. Tianjin's leaders established the zone in 1994, but it was not until last year that the central government gave a clear signal that it regarded this as a project of national importance, not just a local venture. In March the development of Binhai was listed as one of the country's goals in a five-year economic plan adopted by China's legislature. On June 6th a central government document declared Binhai to be an “experimental zone for comprehensive reform”. Hitherto only Pudong New Area, Shanghai's flagship development zone, had enjoyed this title, which it acquired last year.

Binhai has emerged as the development zone darling of China's president, Hu Jintao, and its prime minister, Wen Jiabao (himself a native of Tianjin), just as Shenzhen was to the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and Pudong was to Mr Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin. Shenzhen, which is adjacent to Hong Kong, and Shanghai, with its pre-Communist history of capitalist flair, were obvious places to set up zones offering privileged terms to foreign investors. In the north, more deeply imbued with old-style Communist thinking and riven by rivalries (not least between Tianjin and neighbouring Beijing), choosing a place to act as economic trend-setter and investment hub proved more difficult. Lobbying by Tianjin's mayor, Dai Xianglong, a former chief of the central bank who took up the city post in 2002, clearly helped.

The prominence recently given to Binhai suggests that for all the leadership's rhetoric about pushing more investment towards less developed regions in the centre, west and north-east of the country, the coast is still seen as the best bet for sucking in money. By naming Binhai as a testing ground for reform, the leadership is also sending a signal that it is not fazed by recent public criticism of some aspects of economic change, including the inroads made by foreign investors. Binhai hopes another $20 billion of foreign capital will be invested in the zone by 2010, compared with $15.9 billion between 1994 and the end of last year (most of it in the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, a long-established foreign investment enclave within Binhai where the likes of Motorola, Toyota and Samsung have large factories). And despite worries about overheating, Binhai is aiming for average annual GDP growth of 17% for the next five years. In the same period, it will spend $15 billion on infrastructure.

Binhai is still working out the details of its “comprehensive reform” package. Pi Qiansheng, a deputy Communist Party chief of Tianjin and Binhai's ebullient boss, says the central government is likely to approve them next month. Political reform is not high on the agenda, apart from efforts to streamline bureaucracy. Chinese leaders have been wary of calls by some academics for Shenzhen, 1,900km (1,200 miles) to the south, to be given greater freedom to conduct experiments with democracy. Binhai, much closer to Beijing, is hardly likely to be a trailblazer.

Binhai officials prefer to talk about reforms in the financial sector (more freedom for venture capitalists and private investment in banking) and what

they call “land administration”. This is a euphemism for one of the most hotly debated issues of China's current economic reforms, namely whether, and how, to turn rural land into a marketable commodity. Remarkably for such a senior party official, Mr Pi says that “privatisation of land is a possibility”, although he suggests that this is not about to happen soon. Xiao Jincheng, a government researcher in Beijing, says Binhai is considering a different approach from that of Pudong and Shenzhen, where the government simply appropriated land from peasants with little compensation. Binhai's innovation could be to allow peasants to sell land-use rights and profit from the proceeds.

Market-oriented reforms will be less apparent in the supply of water. Tianjin, like much of northern China, has an acute shortage of it. Binhai will depend on water diverted from the YangtzeRiver basin, a massively expensive project, as well as desalinated seawater, which is also costly. The government, rather than industry, is likely to bear most of the burden.