Mark Carter: Shanghai is spectacular, and the mayor has WVU links
Editor's Note: Mark Carter is vice president of Swanson Industries Inc., a Morgantown-based supplier of hydraulic, machining and plating services.
SHANGHAI, CHINA -- There are many great cities in the world to visit or live, but this metropolis is one of the most amazing. This is my eighth visit to Shanghai in three years. On this trip, I am traveling with Gov. Joe Manchin's trade mission. Today (Friday, China time) is a beautiful, sunny day with clear blue skies.
First, a few facts about Shanghai. The pace of construction here goes on at warp speed. Three years ago, the Pudong International Airport was a very large airport. Today, they are putting the final landscaping around the new construction that duplicated what already existed, doubling the airport's size. None of this was here three years ago.
The skyscrapers go on forever. The World Financial Centre is in the final stages of construction, and will be the tallest building in the world (until another city tops it in the race for the tallest). Shanghai completes a building of 30 stories or more every 12 days.
It already has more skyscrapers than the entire West Coast of the United States. Many areas of the city are being modernized in preparation for the World Expo in 2010.
The city of Shanghai has 63 universities.
The West Virginia trade mission began Thursday with a meeting with the mayor of Shanghai at the City Municipal Building.
Gov. Manchin spoke about the things that West Virginia and Shanghai have in common, mainly the use of coal to generate power, and that we have a common number of residents -- well, sort of. It is only a decimal point difference. West Virginia has 1.8 million residents; the city of Shanghai has 18 million.
The mayor was a bit busy this day. He was meeting with three United States governors and two foreign presidents. Of course he saw us first -- he has ties to West Virginia University's exchange program.
Following this meeting, the delegation split into two groups. I traveled with first lady Gayle Manchin to the Pudong Jinqiao Manufacturing Zone. In Chinese, Jinqiao means "Golden Bridge" to the "lucky place." I would say that was a good choice of names: in 17 years they have completed 777 business start-ups in the zone. This represents $16.2 billion of foreign investment. You almost have the feeling of being at Disney World, the way different areas have housing designed for the Americans, British, Germans, etc. There are schools, churches, daycare, large athletic facilities, shopping and movie theaters. All this to make the foreigners living here feel like they are at home while they run those 777 factories.
In the afternoon, I led a tour of Swanson Industries' newest factory in Shanghai. Swanson Industries has facilities in six states in the USA and in Shanghai. We have 780 employees; 420 of them are in the Morgantown area. Here we manufacture hydraulic cylinders of a smaller size than we make in our United States factories. This facility was started up in May and now has 51 employees. When I was here six weeks ago, we gave talks to the employees about the importance of quality. Today we were greeted with a large banner, all in Chinese. I asked the translator what it said. She replied, "Quality is the life of our company." Not the exact words that I had used, but better yet, their words.
The evening kicked off with the WVU Shanghai Alumni Welcome Banquet. Over 200 WVU alumni from Shanghai joined together to celebrate our arrival. CEOs of major Chinese companies told many stories about how their education at the WVU College of Business was the reason for their success. Over and over again, they recognized the Center for Chinese Business Research and professors Bill Riley and Victor Chow for their wonderful memories of Morgantown. They now are sending their children to WVU to continue the tradition.
The banquet concluded with a slide show of the Morgantown campus and photos of them while they were there. Of course, it would not have been complete without everyone singing Country Roads while the music played along with the slide show.
The evening wrapped up in spectacular fashion with the Shanghai alumni joining us for a boat cruise on the Huanpu River along the Bund. This is when you can see the city in all its glory, the skyscrapers coming to life with lights, one story at a time. This is what I call a Shanghai Night.