Ties That Bind - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

Bay Area-China Trade: Behind the Numbers
manage and share project and facilities data—permits, schedules, estimates, budgets, inspection
reports, construction and design documents—across Seven Eleven’s network of 10,000 stores in
Japan. Seven-Eleven has brought the two companies in to help implement its expansion into
China. AREP, a French engineering design and architectural firm affiliated with SCNF, the
French Rail Board, has used Buzzsaw to communicate, share documents, simultaneously review
and modify plans, and otherwise collaborate with Chinese local design institutes over a secure,
multilingual platform, on projects such as the Beijing Museum and the Shanghai Railway Station.
The Chengdu Hydroelectric Investigation and Design Institute (CHIDI) utilized Autodesk’s Civil
3D mapping and design modeling program to visualize and analyze the terrain and rock structure
of the steep mountain gorge along the Yalong River, in the construction of the Jinpin Hydropower
Plant. The $2 billion phase one project includes a 3,600-megawatt power station and a
305-meter double-arched dam, the world’s largest.
Autodesk began shifting its software to a server-based subscription service for the Asia-Pacific
region in 2003—a step that has helped simplify licensing, enable secure communications, offer
fast access to upgrades and better protect intellectual property.
Architecture/Engineering/Urban Planning/Construction
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In 2005 China saw completion of an estimated 4.7 billion square feet of construction, up from 2
billion in 1998. This included multi-use highrises, government complexes, hotels, shopping malls
twice the size of any in North America, central business districts, even entire neighborhoods and
towns built from the ground up with parks, civic buildings, schools, stores and artificial rivers
and lakes.
Shanghai alone has more than 4,000 skyscrapers (buildings over 18 stories high)—nearly double
the number in New York—and has another 1,000 on the drawing boards or under construction,
and scheduled for completion in this decade. By 2010, less than 5% of the historic city will remain,
and much of that will be in renovated districts like Xintiandi where old facades front restaurants,
nightclubs and tourist shops.
China is working to remake its urban centers: in preparation for the 2008 Olympic games; to
accommodate the 140 million rural Chinese that have flooded into cities along the Yangtze and
Pearl Rivers in past years, and the 75 million more expected to follow by 2010; to provide a
business infrastructure and standard of living that will attract and hold successful entrepreneurs;
and to accommodate foreign firms setting up offices and research campuses, and expatriate
managers looking for high-end housing. Construction now underway reflects years of pent-up
demand after the 1997 economic crisis, and later the SARS and avian flu outbreaks, dampened
business activity throughout Asia.
Where property development was once driven exclusively by government ministries and stateowned
firms, regulations in 1992 and 2004 clarifying private property ownership brought foreign
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