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SHANGHAI, Dec. 11 – Chongming Island, China’s third-largest island and designated for ecotourism development, looks likely to become the site of a new Disneyland after 2010.
The island, situated north of Shanghai, will likely get a Disney theme park following the 2010 World Expo a government spokesman for the island said yesterday.
“We have made plenty of efforts to have a Disney theme park. No decision has been made so far. We will make announcements when we know the result. A Disney theme park will probably be built in Shanghai after the World Expo,” the spokesman said.
As the project is a significant one, it will need approval from Beijing before it can proceed. However, links to the island are scheduled to improve once a bridge and tunnel linking Chongming to the Shanghai are completed in time for the World Expo and Beijing will likely move ahead with the project.
Currently, the Disney’s only theme park on the Chinese mainland is located in Hong Kong. A spokesman for Hong Kong’s Commerce and Economic Development Bureau told the South China Morning Post: “The mainland’s tourist market is very big, it is big enough to accommodate more than one international theme park. Tourism is not a zero-sum game; every place has its environment and attractions that suit different markets.”
Hong Kong Disneyland, in which the city’s government owns 57 percent to Walt Disney Co.’s 43 percent, has suffered widening losses this year on a fall in attendance and spending by visitors since it opened in 2005. According to MarketWatch, the park missed its first-year target of 5.6 million visitors in 2006 by a margin of 400,000. The park has since declined to provide data for its second operating year, though local media reports say the attendance figures were lower than in the previous year.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers last year estimated that theme parks in China, excluding Hong Kong, will generate US$1.8 billion in 2010, up from US$1.3 billion in 2005. China, the second-largest market, is an area of particular growth, spurred by a rapidly expanding middle class, according to an industry report. According to the TEA/ERA report, new parks are under development near Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhouzhuang, Wuhu and Guangdong.
What a lot of readers may not realise is that Chongming Island, had history moved differently, might have become Hong Kong. The Brits set up in Chongming prior to their Hong Kong adventures, and established a garrison there, with the intent of developing it as a trading port in it’s strategic location close to the mouth of the Yangtze and therefore controlling all river traffic up and down it into and from Chinas heartland. However, it also was a major breeding ground for mosquitos, many soldiers there died from maleria. The graveyard and ruins of the Garrison are still there. Come various treaties over the Opium Wars, and the Brits were given Hong Kong and the right to use a strip of undeveloped land on the Huangpu if Chongming Island was returned. It surprised many that the Brits did just that. Chongming Island slipped back into obscurity, while the ‘strip of land’ turned into Shanghai and Hong Kong was developed. But for a short while, Chongming Island was the major trading port of East China and if things had been different – it would now look like Pudong.