I recently had a very pleasant visit to my office from an old friend from the Ningbo Meishan Free Trade Port. Meishan is a remote island off the coast of Zhejiang, an hour-and-a-half drive from Ningbo. I had published an article about the port in the July/August 2008 issue of Chaina Magazine.

The port will in many ways be like the Shanghai Yangshan port just to the north of it, except that it will address much of the logistics needs of provinces south of Jiangsu Province: Zhejiang and Jiangxi, more specifically. The Port was just approved by the national level government a year ago. Administrators for the Port are looking for two 100,000 ton berths to be completed by the end of 2010 next year. They are also currently building one of four bridges from the mainland to the island, as well as carrying out a massive landfill project to extend the length of coastline along which they will build nine more berths. Interestlingly, the global economic downturn has in no way affected the massive construction project, which is slated for completion by 2020. The project is likely one of those that is being touted as part of the US$586 billion stimulus package the national government has been promoting the last five months.

However, other parts of Ningbo have been affected economically.

Monday, 28 March 2009 at the Benelux Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai I’ll be talking about the overall investment environment in Ningbo as well as some of the regulatory hurdles the region presents to foreign investors. Hope to see you there!

Email me… your name, company name, industry and country in which you are working to get a PDF copy of the article.