Building a clear account of new urbanization

Chenjia Town in Chongming, adjacent to Shanghai's central urban area, enjoys a uniquely favorable natural environment. Anyone stepping into this small town cannot ignore this ecological feature: its year-round good air quality rate reaches 92.9%, and the 300 sq km Dongtan Wetland retains its original natural texture and water system network. The town's layout also embodies the overall pattern of a new type of town where town and countryside blend and people and nature draw close. Its positioning as an ecological town, knowledge city and leisure destination paints a beautiful picture of small-town development.

Especially after the Yangtze River Tunnel and Bridge project opened in 2009, the convenience of transport has made these rural scenes easily accessible. On holidays, Chenjia Town and even Chongming Island become "congested" with crowds. Urban visitors who have long lived in the city are all willing to come here to enjoy the pleasures of nature; after all, the journey from the city center is only about an hour's drive. The problem is that on ordinary days, these visitors are often nowhere to be seen.

The phenomenon does not stop there. Chenjia Town's plan calls for its urban population to reach 210,000 by 2020, but today the local population is only just over 60,000, and those remaining are mainly the elderly and children, while young people go to downtown Shanghai to seek jobs. Although Chenjia Town has also planned an international education and R&D zone capable of accommodating three or four universities, and Xianda College of Shanghai International Studies University is located here, with three or four thousand people active on campus during the school term, they are after all not a consumer group that can take root here.

If the planned population scale is to be reached in the next five or six years, more than 20,000 people would now need to be added each year, requiring average annual population growth of more than 20% for it to be possible. Looking at Yu'an Modern Community, the town's largest residential community, one third has already been built, with more than 3,000 households moved into 1 million sq m of resettlement housing, and living facilities are relatively complete. Farmers not only live in apartment buildings, but through demolition and relocation each family has multiple residential buildings, which can be sold as commercial housing after five years. The improvement in living conditions and the growth of household wealth make new urbanization possible.

At present, housing prices in Chenjia Town are only six or seven thousand yuan per sq m. Relative to the average housing market price of twenty or thirty thousand in downtown Shanghai, this is of course a low-lying area, but buyers have not "flocked in." Even those who buy here for long-term returns have a very low occupancy rate, even when the journey from a home in Chenjia Town to the workplace is within a normal one-hour drive. What is the reason? The head of an important local enterprise summed it up in one sentence: the high tolls of the tunnel and bridge project are the biggest obstacle restricting the flow of people.

It turns out that the opening of the Shanghai Yangtze River Tunnel and Bridge effectively improved the transport conditions of Chongming Island and Changxing Island, but the pricing standard of 50 yuan for a one-way trip for small passenger vehicles (30 yuan for the Yangtze River Bridge and 20 yuan for the tunnel) and 100 yuan for a round trip also creates a relatively high threshold for the flow of people and goods. Public information shows that the toll-collecting entity of the Shanghai Yangtze River Tunnel and Bridge is Shanghai Yangtze River Tunnel and Bridge Construction Development Co., Ltd., and the toll period is 25 years.

There is of course some justification for tolls. The total investment in the Yangtze River Tunnel and Bridge project was 12.6 billion yuan, and this investment naturally needs to be gradually recovered. Today the weekday traffic volume of the tunnel and bridge project is 20,000 to 30,000 vehicle trips. Calculated according to the toll standard for small passenger vehicles, annual toll revenue is about 500 million yuan. If maintenance costs and interest costs are added, it would indeed take about 25 years to recover the investment. It is of course correct that government investment also needs to calculate economic accounts, but the question is whether tolls are the only way to recover the investment.

For example, Chongming County's finance could take on the tolls as a lump-sum burden and let traffic pass free of charge, but Chongming County's county-level fiscal revenue in 2013 was only 4 billion yuan, and it would probably be unrealistic to take out one eighth of that to pay for passing vehicles. Residents who rarely travel to and from Chongming Island might also have objections to this. However, the economic account cannot be calculated only in this way. For example, Chenjia Town has very good development prospects but a small population scale, so it clearly lacks confidence when talking about people-centered new urbanization. If its population could be doubled, calculated at Shanghai's per capita GDP of more than 90,000 yuan, the GDP corresponding to this newly added population would be more than 12 billion yuan.

Of course, population growth does not simply correspond to GDP growth, but it is certainly a precondition for development. New urbanization requires the coordination of industry and the concentration of population, but at present it is constrained by the high tolls of the tunnel and bridge project, and the population has been unable to grow for a long time, leaving both industrial support and living support lacking momentum. Liang Jun, general manager of Shanghai Chongming County Chenjia Town Construction Development Co., Ltd., said bluntly that at present they are pinning their hopes on rail transit Line 19, when the population may show explosive growth. According to public information, this plan may not be completed until the "13th Five-Year Plan" period.

Is the solution really to make more residents of Chenjia Town and even Chongming Island wait bitterly for five or six years or even longer? This is somewhat lazy thinking. The cost of the tunnel and bridge project must of course be recovered, but the development of Chenjia Town and even Chongming cannot lag behind either. A way must be found to "let the water flow to raise the fish." The current financial resources of Chongming or Chenjia Town are of course not easily enough to cover the 500 million yuan in annual tolls, but what about after five or even ten years of development? Let a place like Chenjia Town, the back garden of Shanghai's center, develop, gather popularity, and then repay this debt through the fiscal revenue that grows.

It should be noted that Shanghai's 5 major bridges and 3 tunnels crossing the Huangpu River from the urban area also abolished tolls on May 1, 2000. At that time, what needed to be solved was not only the congestion caused by tolls, but also support for the development and opening up of Pudong. In the more than ten years since, Pudong, with the acceleration of the flow of people and goods, entered the fast lane of development, and its radiating benefits to Shanghai far exceeded those eight toll projects. Why can Chongming not enjoy the same treatment? At the very least, it could be given more preferential treatment.

Such calls have in fact long existed in Chongming, but no response has been seen. In recent years, at Shanghai's "Two Sessions," relevant CPPCC members and deputies to the people's congress have put forward opinions on lowering the toll standard of the Yangtze River Tunnel and Bridge. The special research group of Chongming County's municipal people's congress deputies also once submitted the "Research Report on Exempting Chongming Vehicles from the Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge Toll," in which the group suggested solving as soon as possible the issue of exempting Chongming-registered vehicles from the Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge toll so as to truly give play to the role of the tunnel and bridge in promoting Chongming's economic development. Only by calculating this account clearly can new urbanization truly be people-centered.

In June this year, Premier Li Keqiang of the State Council presided over an executive meeting of the State Council to deploy the building of a comprehensive multidimensional transport corridor and create the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and to discuss and approve the "Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Development of the Logistics Industry." The meeting required improving logistics infrastructure, perfecting the transport network, improving urban passage management for logistics distribution vehicles, and accelerating the resolution of prominent "bottleneck" problems. The toll bottleneck of Chenjia Town and even Chongming Island is exactly reflected in this. On the one hand, building the Yangtze River Economic Belt cannot do without Shanghai Chongming at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and the medium- and long-term development of the logistics industry cannot ignore the Shanghai-Chongming-Suzhou major corridor. The essence of "Likonomics" is delegating power and yielding profits. "Smooth flow of goods" can both clearly activate the economy and broadly benefit people's livelihood. Why would local governments not be glad to do it?