Nanjing: What a Gas
March 20th, 2008 | by This is China! |Yesterday, while heading over one of the bridges that connects north Nanjing with the city proper, across the Yangtze River, I marveled at the refineries that belched steam, flames and only-God-knows-what-else into the air. I was returning from a visit to one of the Chinese IT software companies in the Nanjing New and High-Technology Zone. I first visited the Zone nearly five years before. Then, investment was light and officials thirsty for investment of any kind. Construction had just re-started in the area after a hiatus of several years, judging by the condition of the buildings and the yards.
Now, construction in the Zone is really booming, and officials are literally giving free office space and tax holidays to investors for the first several years of investments. Probably the greatest reason the Zone is a step-child compared to its near-saturated cousin just south of the River Yangtze - The Nanjing Economic Trade and Development Zone - is The Bridge over the Yangtze that connects the High-Tech Zone with the city : the company driver told me it is miserable to cross during rush hour (1- to 2-hour crossing time), and six hours during snow blizzards. Though a second bridge has opened between the northern isthmus and the City, the bridge is a toll bridge, dissuading spend-thrift drivers from using it on a daily basis; that means, most Chinese drivers.
The environment in and around Nanjing is a far cry from that other Beijing-designated IT hub, Hangzhou, where green-green-green are the watchwords.
A recent Reuters report confirms Nanjing has little incentive to clean up the environment just to attract IT investment:
“BASF and Sinopec have poured $2.9 billion into the Nanjing petrochemical complex , the largest single investment in the German company’s 140-year history.”
The refinery processes naphtha or natural gas into ethylene, a key building block for plastics, rubber and synthetic fiber.
