Cranes Fill China’s Skyline [05/28/09]
I just returned from a two-week tour of one of China's fastest growing industrial sectors. As a guest of the Chinese government, I was introduced to Party officers, mayors, and business leaders in the Liaoning Province. This industrial region is an 1 ½ -hour flight northwest of Beijing, in the heart of China's coalmines across from Korea, with a population of 120 million. While coal mining is still a prime industry, Liaoning Province is investing heavily in technology, manufacturing, global distribution, and even ecology.
Imagine entering an industrial park 10x larger than the Los Angeles Port. This is the massive scale of China's new real estate. Tie Ling is building an urban center for 200,000 inhabitants to support the Shenyang-Tie Ling Industrial Corridor. The Central Government’s preferential policies are creating the largest petrochemical center in Northeast China, covering 43 square kilometers. In each of the five cities (Shenyang, Tie Ling, Fushun, Anshan, and Dilian) that I visited the skyline was filled with construction cranes.
How will China impact Chicago in the future? My guess is that China will maximize the use of Chicago's transportation hub for distribution, thereby tightening the O'Hare real estate market. A growing number of Chinese tours are organized for investors who want to take advantage of the lower U.S. real estate prices. More than 100 Chinese investors have been shopping for commercial property since late 2008.
TOBI is well positioned to facilitate international transactions involving Asian clients. Since 1996 we’ve assisted Japanese, Korean, Hong Kong Chinese, and Taiwanese clients with Chicago real estate. We look forward to working with China. In the meantime, should you have any questions about real estate or China please contact me at ishida@tobicorp.com or (847) 635-7118.
(Mas Ishida is the Founder and Principal of TOBI International Corporation based near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.)
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