No Crowds for China’s New Year

Every year on Dec. 31, a number of cities stand out as being the hottest spots to ring in the New Year: New York, London, Sydney and Tokyo. Now Beijing wants to join that list too—and hopes doing so will help boost tourism to the city.

And if not many people show up to the party? Well, that’s part of the plan, too.

The city is unveiling its first-ever western New Year’s extravaganza, rolling out a digital light show surrounding one of the city’s most renowned cultural icons–the Temple of Heaven, where Chinese emperors in centuries past went to pray for good harvests.

As midnight approaches, digital lights will transform part of the temple grounds into a giant, skyward-facing analog clock. Hundreds of local students will ride stationary green bikes that have been placed facing the temple and will light up—an intended salute to the importance of environmental protection. Meanwhile, LED lights will shoot colored beams into the sky and a countdown of the final seconds left in 2011 will be projected onto the temple itself, a triple-tiered gable structure built in the early 1400’s, creating 3-D visual effects.

But there will be one major difference between Beijing’s attempt and other hyped international celebrations, such as New York’s famed ball-dropping and the ringing chimes coming from Big Ben in London.  Unlike Times Square, where one million people flock each New Year’s Eve, according to the Times Square Alliance, Beijing’s festivities won’t be open to the public.

“The park isn’t big enough to hold that many people,” said Sun Weijia, the vice chairman of Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development and one of the event’s organizers. Organizers have, however, contacted travel agencies to extend invitations to more than 500 foreign tourists who will be in the city, and journalists have also received invitations, Mr. Sun said, predicting a total audience of more than 3,000 people.

The goal of the event is not to draw big crowds to one site but to serve as an advertisement to the world’s tourists, Mr. Sun said, adding that the city gained global attention in the run-up to the Olympics and that the spotlight has since faded.

“Some zones [at the event] won’t have an audience,” he said, adding, “we designed them especially for television broadcasts.”

Some might point out that China is home to one of the world’s largest public squares, a space that dwarfs Times Square and could fit many more people.

But China’s leaders have long opposed big public gatherings, especially at Tiananmen Square. The image of thousands of students rallying for democratic rights in 1989 remains a fresh threat in the minds of many officials. In this upcoming year of leadership transition, the focus will be on stability.

China’s masses will have to watch the celebration from their televisions at home. Events will be broadcast by those lucky enough to invited to the Temple of Heaven — camera crews and other media types who can broadcast the show across the nation and to the rest of the world.

Beijing’s New Year’s bash will differ from those in many cities in another respect, too: a lack of fireworks. Fireworks of the tube-launched, explosive variety are by no means rare on the streets of Beijing, and their public use can be a substantial fire hazard in the period around Chinese New Year (which will fall in late January in 2012).

But the Beijing government’s countdown won’t have any. “Beijing doesn’t allow the use of fireworks, especially in imperial parks,” Mr. Sun said.

–Laurie Burkitt and Owen Fletcher; follow Laurie at @lburkitt and follow Owen at @owenfletcher.

In recent years, China has re-invigorated its support for leading state-owned enterprises in sectors it considers important to “economic security,” explicitly looking to foster globally competitive national champions.

The Chinese government faces numerous economic development challenges, including:
(a) reducing its high domestic savings rate and correspondingly low domestic demand through increased corporate transfers and a strengthened social safety net;
(b) sustaining adequate job growth for tens of millions of migrants and new entrants to the work force; (c) reducing corruption and other economic crimes; and
(d) containing environmental damage and social strife related to the economy’s rapid transformation.

The People’s Republic of China is the world’s second largest economy after the United States by both nominal GDP ($5 trillion in 2009) and by purchasing power parity ($8.77 trillion in 2009).

Some economists believe that Chinese economic growth has been in fact understated during much of the 1990s and early 2000s, failing to fully factor in the growth driven by the private sector and that the extent at which China is dependent on exports is exaggerated.

The two most important sectors of the economy have traditionally been agriculture and industry, which together employ more than 70 percent of the labor force and produce more than 60 percent of GDP.

China has acquired some highly sophisticated production facilities through trade and also has built a number of advanced engineering plants capable of manufacturing an increasing range of sophisticated equipment, including nuclear weapons and satellites, but most of its industrial output still comes from relatively ill-equipped factories.

China’s increasing integration with the international economy and its growing efforts to use market forces to govern the domestic allocation of goods have exacerbated this problem.

China now ranks as the fifth largest global investor in outbound direct investment (ODI) with a total volume of $56.5 billion, compared to a ranking of 12th in 2008, the Ministry of Commerce said on Sunday.

Last year was the eighth consecutive year that the nation’s ODI had grown.

China is aiming to be the world’s largest new energy vehicle market by 2020 with 5 million cars.

In large part as a result of economic liberalization policies, the GDP quadrupled between 1978 and 1998, and foreign investment soared during the 1990s.

Even with these improvements, agriculture accounts for only 20% of the nation’s gross national product.

Except for the oasis farming in Xinjiang and Qinghai, some irrigated areas in Inner Mongolia and Gansu, and sheltered valleys in Tibet, agricultural production is restricted to the east.

Horses, donkeys, and mules are work animals in the north, while oxen and water buffalo are used for plowing chiefly in the south.

Coal is the most abundant mineral (China ranks first in coal production); high-quality, easily mined coal is found throughout the country, but especially in the north and northeast.

China’s leading export minerals are tungsten, antimony, tin, magnesium, molybdenum, mercury, manganese, barite, and salt.

China also has extensive hydroelectric energy potential, notably in Yunnan, W Sichuan, and E Tibet, although hydroelectric power accounts for only 5% of the country’s total energy production.

The iron and steel industry is organized around several major centers (including Anshan, one of the world’s largest), but thousands of small iron and steel plants have also been established throughout the country.

See the article here:
No Crowds for China’s New Year