Bloomberg Checks Up on Tianjin's Manhattan

Bloomberg: Succeed, or Crash and Burn?

If it comes off, Tianjin’s Manhattan project will become the latest illustration of China’s build-it-and-they-will-come approach to development. Pudong -- the futuristic financial center that sprang up on Shanghai’s east bank in the 1990s -- also had its doubters. Occupancy rates in its central Lujiazui area are 97 percent and rents among the world’s priciest.

“A 7 percent growth rate, like China’s, means a lot of things that look strange today look less so tomorrow,” David Carbon, managing director at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. for economic and currency research, wrote in a report this month. “Roads always go nowhere when you build them. It’s what happens later that counts.”