Businesses benefit from Expo stage
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From self-icing Coke, automobiles of tomorrow to China-made ARJ airplanes, corporate pavilions spanning the D and E zones boast the new technology for a better tomorrow, a trend China needs to adopt in seeking sustainable growth.
The Shanghai Expo, which has broken records on visitors and participants, has accelerated Shanghai's economic upgrading and acts as a better-than-expected playground for dynamic private business to win the hearts of more Chinese consumers and market players, analysts said.
The corporate pavilions are not only there for companies to promote themselves but also to show the business circle's desire and vision to grow more high-tech and more consumer-driven as China is shifting its growth engine from investment and exports to domestic demand.
"Shanghai is improving its economic structure and the Expo is one of the driving forces," said Zuo Xuejin, executive vice president of Shanghai Academy of Social Science. "Thanks to the Expo, the shipping factories and steel-making mills are gone, allowing the fantastic pavilions to rise."
The rising cost of labor and land showed that low-value business just can't hold its ground in Shanghai any more, pushing the city to move up the production chain to seek higher-value business.
"I am sure the site will never return to a site of smoky steel mills but will be home to a new project driven by the services industry," Zuo said.
Shanghai is pursuing growth relying on the advanced manufacturing industry and modern services industries such as the finance and information technology sectors.
Shanghai has the ambition to rise as a global financial and shipping center by 2020, China's cloud computing center and the nation's first city with a 4G network. It is Shanghai's choice, and it is also called amid China's unstoppable urbanization.
China, the world's fastest growing economy, is seeing its rural population dashing to more developed cities like Shanghai and Beijing. In China, the urban population accounts for 46 percent of China's total population. The figure is expected to rise to more than half the total population this year.
A better city doesn't just do good for the local economy, said market analysts.
"Better management of the city is a must to better manage the global economy amid globalization," said Paolo Savona, a professor with Riviste Scientifiche, Unicredit.
While cities are growing bigger as sites of globalization, choices must be made to seek a sustainable growth of urbanization, he said.
Economists said the example of Japan already showcased how the World Expo speeds up the economic updating of a rising economic power.
"Asia has already used Expo to introduce itself to the world," said Glenn B. Maguire, Societe Generale Asia chief economist. "The Shanghai Expo now acts as a launch pad for China to show the world its urbanization."
Private business, which creates 90 percent of jobs in China, put its card on the table to show how spread out but innovative private business can generate growth for the country.
Private business is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Expo, an industry survey showed.
About 80 percent of private business leaders said they think that the Expo and the Private Enterprises Joint Pavilion helped improve the brand image of China's rising private enterprises, which used to be seen as low-cost and low-tech players, said Ernst & Young in a survey.
"It's quite interesting that the Expo doesn't help a lot in boosting Chinese private enterprises' products sales but does well to improve the industry's image for a long-term sustainable growth," said Terence Ho, an Ernst & Young partner.
About 73 percent of the respondents said the Expo will help them to learn about new management and business ideas and experiences while 71 percent said the event will help strengthen the relationship between companies, the overseas market and government.
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