China

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By LARRY KANTER

Senior Reporter

A Northridge-based international trade firm has entered into an agreement with the Chinese government to develop a 3 million-square-foot “trade city” in Southwestern China.

Bien Internationale Corp. announced it will work as a joint venture partner with government and economic development officials in the Chinese city of Nanning to build the facility, which is expected to include an exhibition center, conference facility, business park and retail and entertainment complex.

Bien Internationale will serve as the developer of the project, and will be responsible for raising the approximately $250 million it will cost to build, said N. Thoke Bien, the company’s president and chief executive. In return, the company will receive a portion of the profits generated by the center.

The Chinese government has agreed to provide the land and infrastructure worth an estimated $32 million for development.

The complex “will be a place where Chinese and foreign companies can meet and develop opportunities for trade,” Bien said. “As China grows, we hope to grow with China.”

Bien’s timing could be right. China’s southwestern provinces, which border Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Bhutan, traditionally have been among the country’s most underdeveloped.

But that’s beginning to change. In December, the Chinese government completed a new electric railway line between the province of Yunnan and the Guangxi-Zhuang Autonomous Region, where Nanning is located, and the government has plans for more rail connections in the future. A new international airport, meanwhile, also recently opened in the region.

The new trade city could become a regional commercial hub for the entire area, according to Bien and her associates.

“The Chinese do not want everything to center around Shanghai, Canton and the other major provinces,” said Ed Grant, an Annapolis, Md.-based export and technology consultant who is working on the project. “There is a push to locate activity into other areas.”

Located 400 miles west of Hong Kong and just miles from the Vietnamese border, Nanning could become China’s leading gateway to Southeast Asia, said Bien. The region’s only other convention facility has not been refurbished since the 1950s, she added.

The project also is opening up opportunities for local firms such as the Moorpark-based SpectraF/X Inc., which will design the complex’s entertainment component.

That could include a series of multimedia themed environments, movie theaters, retail stores and restaurants, said Jack Shishido, the company’s senior vice president.

Although SpectraF/X has worked on a number of theme parks in Japan, it is particularly interested in broadening its Asian business to include China, Shishido said.

“Mainland China creates a huge opportunity for everybody because the market is so large and untapped,” he said.

The Nanning project follows two years of painstaking negotiations with Chinese officials, said Bien, who also has worked on trade and infrastructure projects in Central and South America. She said she expects to begin awarding contracts for the Nanning complex within 90 days.

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