World music projects may be launched in Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province. The municipal government expects the projects to boost both the local economy and cultural industry while simultaneously making great global contributions and aiming to hold the first world music conference in 2009, municipal officials said over the weekend.

The opening ceremony of the joint-inspection tour

Fascinated by Vienna's grace and inspired by Olympia's grandiosity, Lianyungang has been hurrying to match them. This grand worldwide musical event, as well as the supporting World Music Town project, is in pre-production. They are aimed to build Lianyungang as world tourism and music city, Mayor Liu Yongzhong said. Several multinational companies, including those from Thailand, the US, the UK, Europe, and China's Hong Kong, Taiwan, are greatly interested and willing to invest billions of dollars.

"If Beijing or Shanghai said they will do such projects, nobody will doubt them. But now Lianyungang has made a proud claim. People wonder: is it really operable? Is it a boast? Thus, we invite officials, professionals and journalists to this joint-inspection to find out the answer," Liu said at the opening ceremony Saturday.

After the inspection tour and a day-long heated discussion on Sunday, experts and officials all agreed the project is doable, and hope the city will soon start the projects.

Du Yue, the secretary-general of UNESCO National Commission of the People's Republic of China told China.org.cn that if the government proceeds smoothly and cautiously, the United Nations will certainly support the projects. Zhu Hao, the vice mayor of Lianyungang, also exclusively revealed to China.org.cn that since experts' endorsement was received on Sunday, the next step for the government is to prepare a detailed planning demonstration according to said experts' ideas and suggestions. Afterwards, it will be submitted as a national project to the National Development and Reform Commission for approval as early as next month. 

Mayor Liu Yongzhong made speech

The municipal government signed cooperation agreements on August 27 with Beijing Qingda Jiahua Investment Co. Ltd., a newly established joint-venture headed by Chen Xin, the president of Thailand-based Huanglongtai Group and head of World Music Conference Planning and Preparation Committee. Its alternative name in the future will be World Music Town Investment & Development Group, supervising all investment, operating and administrative activities. Representatives from 32 investing entities, 12 government departments and 10 designing companies attended the signing ceremony.

Li Daoying, Lianyungang government's vice secretary-general and director of the municipal tourism bureau, said in his opening ceremony speech that UNESCO is highly interested in becoming involved since no worldwide competitions or expositions exist under the United Nations' name, even the renowned Olympics were developed from Greece's local sports event. He said the United Nations wants to find a platform and opportunity for communication from where the messages of love and peace can be preached to leaders and common people of the turbulent world full of wars and terrors.

The planning indicates that Lianyungang has the ambition of being the largest center for world-level music education and music cultural industry and the "United Nations of world music", which seems too good to be true. Various musical instrument and production Expos, performance events, forums, trade fairs and cultural tourism events will be going to happen too.

The city under construction and expecting economic revival

Lianyungang, literally named "Port of Clouds" in Chinese, is in essence a city which has nestled below the development wave for years, compared to Dalian or Qingdao which have expanded by 2 or 3 times from a decade ago.

Its economy only took off this year when a new city blueprint was rolled out. It is the crystal capital in China with near 70 percent of the nation's crystal products coming from the region. About 4.7 million citizens live in the city. Huaguo Mountain, a.k.a "The Flower and Fruit Mountain", a scenic spot which was considered by many as the original place where monkey king Sun Wukong lived in the Chinese old classic Journey to the West, is the city's pride and best tourist attraction.     

According to the general city construction blueprint, the Lianyungang government is going to develop the city into an international coastal town and a modernized port hub, melding both industry and tourism. Officials also said they would place huge importance to spiritual civilization development and ecological environment protection when GDP is rising.

An official from the municipal propaganda department admitted to China.org.cn that the slow development is due to the city's geographic position, a lack of open attitudes, conservatism, and a lack of infrastructure construction. However, officials have confidence in the future due to Lianyungang's plethora of resources ranging from energy to land to labor.

General conception of World Music Conference & Town

Two major projects – World Music Conference and World Music Town – will make up the new city construction program. Three essential parts of the planning will be the respective headquarters of the World Music Conference, World Music Education & Research Base and World Music Industry Promotion Base.

World Music Town conceptional frame (1)

A 100-floor-high tower, a world music museum, a scenery park, a square, a giant opera, a world music university, TV tower, various particular music halls and supporting service center will be built as part of the sprawling complex.

The operational project modes for World Music Conference and World Music Town will be – market-oriented, government-led, globally-involved, and through various companies' implementation. The city will market the brands of both projects by learning from the successful practices of the Olympics, World Exposition and World Cup.

World Music Town conceptional frame (2)

The projects will also try to curry favor with UNESCO. As originally planned, the World Music Conference would be established as an international music organization supported by the United Nations and joined by all nations. Thus in October, the project committee submitted an application report to the UNESCO National Commission of the People's Republic of China, which participated in the evaluation tour during these two days to find out if Lianyungang is good enough for the projects to take place.

Billed as the "musical Olympics", the World Music Conference will be a permanent presentation platform hosting bi-annual musical competition events, as well as a platform for music experts and enthusiasts to learn and communicate, Li Daoying introduced.

The headquarter of World Music Town will be established here in coming years

Besides, many musical talents will be well trained here during annual music evaluations and examinations. Li believes that China has huge market potentials for music education, with 50 million children learning the piano and 10 million learning the violin nowadays. Tens of thousands of pianos, 1 million violins and 6 million guitars are produced in China every year, making China a big music instrument production country.

Exclusive interviews: Lianyungang's dream

Both the World Music Conference and World Music Town projects will cover tens of square kilometers among the city's 300-square-kilometer abandoned salt fields, municipal government Vice Secretary-General Li Daoying revealed to China.org.cn in an exclusive interview on Saturday.

"Why is Lianyungang the only city to do this? Because the city has so many acres of lands to make use of. All are abandoned salt fields, which can be 'recycled'. This is a romantic city, and people here dare to dream. The projects are beyond common people's imagination!" Li said. The "abandoned salt fields" is the core point which he stressed many times, "Why can't Beijing, Shanghai and other big cities do this? Because they don't have such a big quantity of available lands which need no central or provincial government's approval as we do."

It's hard to imagine these remote desolate salt fields as hosting the center of global music.

However, when the inspection team visited the salt fields, or seawater pools, it was noticed that many were far from abandoned.

"Yeah, some are still working, but most of them will be abandoned sooner or later, since the sea salt's cost is much higher than common salt mine's," Vice Mayor Zhu Hao admitted to China.org.cn.

"But the profit is low enough to be a tragedy. Salt factory workers and farmers could be helped by World Music projects, which could greatly raise their incomes. Currently, they earn only 300-400 yuan (about US$38-US$51) monthly and live a poor and hard life. Many have turned the salt fields into other ventures, or simply left to pursue better lives. They would applaud what we are doing and the sooner, the better," he said, pointing out that using those salt fields is not occupying farmland, so no provincial approval is needed. The municipal government can simply approve them itself. Further more, there will be no such relocation issues such as those concerning the Three Gorges Dam.

Government leaders and experts on inspection tour

"Those salt workers and farmers and their children can work in new music projects in the future, which are going to put them on the path to wealth," Zhu Hao added.

It's hard to imagine these remote desolate pools as hosting the center of global music but Zhu ensured his guests it would happen.

Lianyungang's major challenge will be in drawing the attention of world music giants away from the big lights of the US and Europe where over half of the world's copyrighted music is sold.

Li Daoying has solutions, one of which will be an official declaration backed by the UN and member nations. The declaration is already drafted and Li is waiting for the opportune moment to release it publicly. Otherwise, all those Western countries have so much eagerness to sell their products, especially music instrument, in China, a large potential market, he was convinced.

Many wondered whether the "musical city" idea may just be shameless self-promotion to make Lianyungang the "primary pole in development and economy-increase" among fellow cities in northern Jiangsu, a term emanating from the city blueprint. The project has faced many detractors throughout its six-year existence, with many officials refusing to place stock in the project.

An evaluation meeting on Sunday

Some people even questioned Chen Xin, the major investor who has already brought in 200 million yuan (US$25.6 million) to the projects as to whether he is an opportunist who just came here to speculate in real estate. Chen rebuked the controversy on Saturday by saying, "I know what people have said. I know even my wife said that I am crazy. But I'm not crazy. If I were to speculate in real estate, I would have preferred to go to Beijing and Shanghai. I'm just fascinated by the city, the project, the potential and the future. I wholly devote myself to the historical event, like being love with a girl."

City officials will not verify the actual number Chen will totally bring in. It is rumored to be astronomical US$20 billion. Chen said his boss and many foreign investors have big interests and keep him busy on the project.

Li Daoying listed five reasons as to why Lianyungang is perfect for the projects: they first propose the ideas and concepts of the projects and have been studying and working on it for years; the city is making itself an international tourism city, for which the World Music Conference can provide key support; it has unusually abundant amounts of salt fields; good weather, long and abundant history, cultural background and a slew of tourism resources; a strong though un-developed geographic position. It is the eastern terminal of the second European-Asian continental bridge and is a thoroughfare between northern and southern China also being able to positively impact upon western regions.

All of this makes the world music projects more tourism projects in the name of music. Furthermore, the city is like coming from nowhere when it urged the music projects though it had not enough music background, environment, atmosphere, history and tradition to be proud of, as China.org.cn learned. Several experts had the same concern at an evaluation meeting on Sunday.

Heated discussion among officials and experts

"Besides, there are successful precedents. Look at Shenzhen, a former fishery village, which developed into an international metropolis with fast economic growth; Hengdian, a small 10-square-kilometer town before 1996, has now developed into the largest movie production base in China and is called 'Chinese Hollywood' around the world. Why can't Lianyungang? We don't need to copy others and we are not afraid to do big things for development. With government's support and huge investment and city's unique advantages, only Lianyungang can afford the promising vision," concluded Li Daoying.

(China.org.cn by staff reporter Zhang Rui December 11, 2006)