China’s construction and property markets are booming, offering a wealth of opportunities to property professionals, as Edward Simpkins explains.

In November last year, senior staff from consulting and engineering firm Arup went along to 10 Downing Street to sign a contract with Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC).

The contract – actually a series of agreements – extends to the masterplanning and design for a number of ecologically sustainable new cities to be built in China.

The first proposal, which is moving ahead already, is for a whole new city, Dongtan, to be built on China’s third largest island, located in the Yangtze River delta not far from Shanghai.

The fact that the signing was ‘chez Blair’ indicates its importance and is a sign of the times. You only have to turn on the TV or radio or open a newspaper to be told over and over again that economic growth in

China is the biggest story in global economics and even that this will turn out to be the ‘Chinese century’.

Manufacturers, of both low- and high-technology products, are outsourcing their production there while suppliers of raw materials are pouring commodities into the country.

The picture for service providers is more complex.

Banks such as HSBC and Lloyds and insurers such as Prudential and Aviva are offshoring their back-room operations but mainly to low-cost locations where English is more widely spoken, such as India.

So, people working in the property industry could be forgiven for asking themselves what all this fuss has to do with them.

The answer of course is that it could have been your firm going along to 10 Downing Street. And it still could.

A quarter of Arup’s 7 000 staff are based in China and Hong Kong, and it can boast an impressive depth of local talent and breadth of expertise that other consultants would struggle to match.

However, in winning this work it has shown that the opportunities for those with professional expertise in China are huge, and there is plenty more work to go round.

The scale of the building and development work going on in China beggars belief, and the skills offered by RICS members are in high demand.

The Arup contract is to provide planning and consultancy services to SIIC as it implements the Dongtan development scenario. That scheme alone covers 86 square kilometres and the plan is that it should be entirely self-sufficient in food and energy, and have a zero emissions pollution impact.

Dongtan will be a city of three villages.

Phase one should be completed by 2010, in time for the World Expo in Shanghai, and will accommodate a population of 50 000, rising to a projected 500 000 by 2040.

Where possible, labour and materials will be sourced locally to reduce transport and the embodied energy costs associated with construction.

It is one of the most exciting developments taking place anywhere in the world and it is expected to form the blueprint for several other new cities currently being planned in China.

Construction and property markets are booming in China and there has never been a better time to get involved.

RICS has signed partnership and reciprocity arrangements with a number of local professional bodies such as:

• China Institute of Real Estate Appraisers (CIREA)
• China Construction Engineering Cost Association (CECA)
• Shanghai Real Estate Appraisal Association (SREAA).

RICS already has around 180 members based in the country, with a similar amount working there regularly, and has plans to raise profile and membership further.

A number of UK-based professional practices are already involved in the preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and for the big firms with global aspirations the Chinese market is impossible to ignore.

I am a great believer in lifelong learning and as a mature student at London University I see people of all ages returning to education. It is not too late to start learning mandarin!

Edward Simpkins is City reporter for the Sunday Telegraph.

This article appeared in RICS Business, May 2006.