This is China! BLOG

I’ll Take My Fried Rice to Go: Investment North of Nanjing

A China manufacturing site selection project has me traveling the next few days through Western Jiangsu Province and Anhui Province. I first made landfall in Nanjing, capitol of Jiangsu Province, in the extreme west of the region. Nanjing is about a three to three-and-a-half hour drive to the west of Shanghai, while Hefei - the capitol of Anhui - is another couple hours drive west of Nanjing.

My team and I are investigating China economic development zones in the region for an American manufacturing client. The last time I did a formal investigation of the region was four years ago. My how things have changed in Nanjing in four years?

Succinctly put: it’s more polluted. Especially the part of Nanjing north of the river. The area is heavily populated with chemical companies spouting bilious fumes. Enough to gag a maggot, as my father would say.

The intrepid Mr. Lu, the incisive Ms. Zhang and I struck out at the beginning of the day to the city of Yangzhou. Yangzhou is an hour-and-a-half drive north and east of Nanjing. Yangzhou is famous for two things in China: it is the homeplace of the former President of China, Jiang Zemin; and it is the homeplace of Yangzhou fried rice. I find the fried rice most palatable of the two.

Yangzhou is a small city, not wildly well developed. Very few high-rises to speak of. However, government officials made it acutely aware to us that land is at a premium. Though the new policy to auction land to interested buyers has come into effect, practical details have yet to be published as to just how the bidding process is supposed to work in reality. So the officials can still cut land deals, albeit within parameters that are more strict than even a year ago.

An upside to investing in the area is that there is plenty of electrical power to be had from the two nearby power stations . A downside is that the power stations are coal-powered. Yellow rain anyone?

Still, the Yanzghou fried rice government administrators ordered for lunch was delicious. Happily, Jiang Zemin was nowhere in sight.

Later the same day we visited a township of Nanjing called Lu He. Lu He is under the same strict controls as Yangzhou; however, because the city has been late in getting started it still has land that can be developed. Once again, the bidding procedures are coming into play for land purchases; however, with just the right kind and size and country-of-origin, an investment project just may be able to slip past the auction block - for now.

A five minute drive from Lu He heading south to downtown Nanjing found us in a hornet’s nest of chemical factories. The scene reminded me of what a Canadian friend of mine the previous evening at a Nanjing restaurant said, “Take your pick: would you like river-polluted fish or the insecticide-laden vegetables for dinner tonight?”

Maybe I’ll pass this time around.

William Dodson
NANJING, China