Ricarda Hirsiger, 11 June 2009

The day started off with a bus ride through the Jinqiao Export Processing Zone in Shanghai, which was the first state-level economic and technical development zone approved by the State Council in 1990 and the first one officially named as an “export processing zone”. Since its beginning the zone has grown constantly and covers today a vast area of 27 square km.

Although I have read much about EPZ’s throughout the course of my education it was actually the first time that I have personally visited such a zone. Arriving at Jinqiao, I was impressed with the modern houses and apartment complexes, which probably accounted for some of the nicest neighbourhoods I have seen in Shanghai. While I expected massive factories with big chimneys in a rather desolate state, I was also impressed with the many modern office buildings from international companies such as Motorola, Siemens, Nestle, Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Sony, Kodak, Shanghai Sharp, Johnson and Johnson, LG, Toshiba and so forth.

After Jinqiao Export Processing Zone we visited the information centre for the Expo 2010. With the theme slogan “Better city - better life”, it will be held in Shanghai to foster innovative ideas on future life in urban environments. It is expected that 70 million guests will visit this expo that will host over 200 countries and international organisations, hence making it the biggest world expo in history! The preparations for this event are massive, both by China and the participating countries, and started as early as 2003. In order to host the international visitors, Shanghai even started to build new Metro lines that will bring the guests to the various expo sites. And so, it is almost a shame that it will only last for a few months. When we walked through the promotion office and watched the videos and saw the plans of this fun and exciting event, I think we all felt a bit jealous of next year’s MA Globalisation students who will be able to visit this event and travel the world in less than a day.

In the afternoon we visited the famous Red Town, one of the top creative industry parks in Shanghai. Located in and around a former steel factory and next to a sculpture park, Red Town is now an exciting space that brings together artists and designers from a wide range such as fashion, sculpture, or painting. It also holds office spaces, museums, galleries, a public arts library, several cosy coffee places and hip designer venues – as a matter of fact, it reminded me much of designer areas in other fashion hubs such as New York, London, Paris or Milan. The underlying idea behind Red Town is twofold. Firstly the space is meant to serve public welfare by providing an inspirational space for the general public and secondly to link artists with manufacturers to move from “made in China” to “created in China”. We met with an IDS alumni, Mr Gang Hong who is today a successful Chinese entrepreneur with international office locations. Meeting an alumni marked a highlight of the trip because he was not only able to share a lot of interesting facts about the Chinese society, culture and business environment or China’s development stage but also because it was inspiring to hear what path one could take after life at IDS.

Although, we visited three very distinct places I still feel that they had one central element in common: They all reflected that Shanghai has become an international metropolis that can easily keep up with other international hot spots around the globe.


Images: IDS students exploring Red Town and a sculpture from Red Town