From Sandton to Shanghai

(Will the Dubai Burj soon have a Shanghai Rival? Source: Imre Solt)

Shanghai is about first impressions and built to capture not just your attention, but your imagination as well. The Dream of the New China is represented no where else in the country as clearly as in this city. Shanghai is China’s new face for the rest of the world.

Step off your plane at Pudong’s brand new international airport and the Maglev train whisks you into the city at 431km per hour. A short while later you will be dwarfed by the city’s futuristic Financial Centre with half a kilometer high buildings rising out of what were rice paddies not that long ago. It is hard not to be impressed by this sight.

Tourists to China always joke at China’s love of being the best, first, oldest or longest. It is surprising that the Guiness Book of Records were not started here first. Want to ride on the world’s longest bridge, see the world’s highest mountain, biggest company, most populous country with the longest continuous civilization then you have come to the right place. Whether you take all the statistics with a pinch of salt or not is another question.

So, when Dubai announced plans to build the world’s highest building, it must have been something of a slap in the face for Shanghai’s top brass. After all their efforts of cultivating the world’s most modern city out of Pudong’s rice paddies, along comes along a little desert usurper to contruct the Burj Dubai.

The Dubai Burj planners have cloaked their building in mystery and have not announced its exact height yet. However, the monolith is already at 611m (far surpassing Taiwan’s Tapei 101 - at 508m it was the world’s tallest building) and is rumoured to be heading over 800m into the heavens.

Sip cocktails from the 87^th floor Sky Bar of Shanghai’s Jin Mao Tower and the helicopter-like view is magnificent. Look straight down and you will see a golf driving range occupying one of the most prime land spots in the city - a strange anomaly until China recently announced plans to build the world’s city’s tallest building on that spot.

This is where it gets interesting for me. The Burj will be finished in 2009 and then the records will become clear for China and their team of international architects to peruse. China’s new mega structure will start its construction process in 2009 and it is ‘proposed’ to reach 580 meters.

The city planners have always envisaged a triumvir of buildings dominating Shanghai’s Financial skyline. This will be their last shot at another Guiness Book of Records. In something of a faux pas, China’s official news agency - Xinhua - recently claimed that the ‘Shanghai Centre’ would be the world’s tallest building surpassing the Burj which is still under construction at 555m.

My prediction is something of a long shot. Shanghai will definitely soon have the world’s second and third tallest buildings by 2010. Whether building plans ‘change’ to challenge the Burj is something to watch. However, given Shanghai’s large empty office rate in Pudong and the difficulty of building on what is essentially swamp land with a high water table is something to be seen.

Whatever the case, there is no doubt that China would love to occupy number 1 spot to add to all is many other highest, tallest records.