The rival down the road

摘要

Northern Chinese officials have long looked with envy on the industrial booms enjoyed by the Yangzi and Pearl River deltas to the south. Leaders in the city of Tianjin talk of replicating the southern experience by turning their port city into a "dragon head" leading the region, a Shanghai of the north. They have not been helped, however, by a longstanding rivalry with neighbouring Beijing and a political culture in northern China that has found it harder to adapt to freewheeling private enterprise. But Tianjin's leaders believe that the city may be on the verge of getting what it wants. They are excited by a visit paid in late June by the prime minister, Wen Jia-bao, and his strong endorsement of Tianjin's New Binhai Zone, a decade-old industrial park and port complex that has already attracted billions of dollars of investment from some of the world's biggest manufacturers. Officials say Binhai will feature in the country's next five-year plan to be promulgated in 2006-a sign, they say, of the zone's elevation from local project to a national strategic priority.