Disney teams with Shanghai firm for first China theme park

Walt Disney Co signed a contract yesterday with state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group Co to build its first theme park in China, less than a week after the World Expo drew a record number of visitors.

The signing was “another step forward” in Disney’s goal to open its fourth theme park outside the US, after being in talks with the Shanghai city government “for quite some time”, the Burbank, a California-based company, said yesterday. Disney won government approval for a theme park last year. It still needed approval for the venture from “relevant government departments”, the municipal government said. Shendi will work with the world’s biggest theme-park operator to construct and operate the park, according to another government statement.

“This is a sign that restrictions on construction projects have been lifted after the Shanghai World Expo, and work on the Disney park will speed up,” Zhang Chifei, a Nanjing-based analyst at Huatai Securities Co, said. The project might cost 25 billion yuan ($3.8 bn), state-controlled Xinhua News Agency said.

The park, to be in Shanghai’s Pudong district, would have a Magic Kingdom theme, with some elements reflecting regional flavour, Disney said last November. Disney opened a park in Hong Kong in 2005.

The six-month Expo attracted 73.1 million visitors, topping the record of 64 million set in Osaka, Japan, in 1970. It was part of an investment campaign in the city of 19.2 million people that China aims to develop into a global financial centre by 2020. The city government has spent $44 bn on construction and operating costs, as well as infrastructure, including airport terminals, new roads and tunnels and a three-year renovation of The Bund, a historic set of localities in the city centre.