ABSTRACT
Since becoming the newest national economic zone and growth engine of China in 2005, Tianjin Binhai New Area (hereafter TBNA) has drawn attention across China but remains relatively unknown to the outside world. Located on the coastline of Tianjin Municipality (see Map 7.1), the largest industrial city in northern China, TBNA has been one of the fastest growing local economies in China with gross domestic product (GDP) averaging about 20 percent since 2006. The Chinese media has dubbed it as “China’s third growth engine.” It follows the special economic zone (SEZ), and now megacity, of Shenzhen bordering Hong Kong that took off in the 1980s (see the preceding chapter) and the Pudong new district of Shanghai that has flourished since the early 1990s (Chen 2009). We see TBNA as the third coming of China’s SEZs, with important retrospective connections to Shenzhen and Pudong and prospective implications for major cities in China and beyond.
