This is China! BLOG

Ningbo Meishan: Not Just Another Free Trade Port

My sexy but dumb LG mobile phone didn’t work well in the mountains of Ningbo District of Zhejiang Province. Actually, it didn’t work at all. That left the driver’s phone. I pulled rank and told the driver to pass over his Nokia, which he dutifully did. His phone worked just fine.

And just as well. I think we had to call my local contact a half dozen times at least within a handful of kilometers of the Ningbo Meishan Free Trade Port Area. An old acquaintance that had worked in the Ningbo Free Trade Zone had recently been transferred out there and, since I was sort of in the neighborhood – if you count and hour-and-a-half drive from Ningbo City as being in the same neighborhood. Meishan is actually a small island just off the east coast of Zhejiang province, south of the larger island of Zhoushan. The point of free trade ports is that ships can dock, off-load their cargo and processing can be done right at the Port, then re-loaded on other ships without customs duties paid and VATs tabulated. Another point is that domestic companies that sell into a Free Trade Port can apply for VAT rebate, while those that sell into Free Trade Zones are not eligible.

The drive into Meishan is not easy, because the entire island is under construction. We crossed a one-and-a-half kilometer long construction bridge made of slabs of steel plating laid over girders: the drive was slow and nerve-wracking. Another couple kilometers across unpaved roads, pulling aside for the occasional dump truck, and we arrived at a whitewashed government compound with the national flag flying high above the guard house.

My old acquaintance – whose English name is Casper, the friendly Chinese government official – welcomed us with a presentation about the plans for the Port. I asked if we could look around the area. He apologized, explaining that the entire area is one big construction site. No access to the coast.

Casper invited us to lunch in the only accommodation literally for scores of miles around: a lovely wooden lodge area with a courtyard of well-manicured flowers rounded out our half-day excursion to the area. The lodge had once catered to workers from the nearby salt refineries. As we finished off our meal of octopus the size of our hands (eaten whole, I might add), sea water snails, sizzling beef and a delicious yam congee, Casper and I commiserated that by 2010 – when the first phase of the Port construction is complete – all the natural beauty of the island’s countryside will be gone.

The price of modernizing a society.

Look for an article of mine about development plans for Meishan Free Trade Port in the next copy of Chaina Magazine, a publication of the China Supply Chain Council.