What We Have Done
Shanghai’s rapid evolution into a post-industrial metropolis is transforming the city’s economy, social system and culture, and the metropolis’ linkages globally and with the wider Yangtze Delta Region, China’s principal engine of economic growth. The Cities Alliance provided grant financing to GTZ, the German Development Corporation, to conduct a strategic assessment of Shanghai’s global potentials for the Shanghai Development Research Center (SDRC), the government’s top policy think-tank. Chreod and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences were retained to jointly conduct the work over a two-year period.
Chongqing is developing rapidly into a core metropolitan region in western China. From a moribund, antiquated industrial center, it has transformed over the last 15 years into a robust and modern metropolis, attracting more than 3 million migrant workers. ADB retained Chreod, in association with the Shanghai Development Research Center, to advise the Chongqing municipal government on metropolitan development strategies that would manage urban growth, increase accessibility across the region, integrate migrants into the metropolitan economy and social systems, and improve public health and safety.
To support the East Java Regional Development and Reform Project, the provincial government decided to prepare a Strategic Infrastructure Development Strategy (SIDS), the first such provincial strategy in Indonesia. The World Bank retained Chreod to work with provincial and municipal agencies to prepare the SIDS which outlined: development goals to be supported by infrastructure investment; policies and actions to improve enabling environments and investment management; capital investment requirements to 2030; and a financing program for provincial and municipal investment.
Chreod, in association with the Shanghai Development Research Centre, was retained by ADB to assist the Hebei Provincial Government with the preparation of a new provincial development strategy. The project comprised nine sector studies and their integration into an overall economic and spatial development strategy that included measures to alleviate poverty in mountain areas north of Beijing and Tianjin. In 2005, a Ministry of Finance Expert Panel selected this project as the most successful technical assistance project undertaken that year in China.
After completing the fi rst China City Development Strategies project in Changsha and Guiyang, the World Bank selected Chreod to prepare the second CDS project in China, focusing on five broad “city-regions”. The largest was Chengdu, capital of Sichuan. Chreod’s extensive field research and stakeholder consultations led to a CDS for Chengdu that focused on the integration of strategic suburban cities and large towns into the metropolitan economy, measures to improve urban and suburban growth management, and actions to promote the development of innovation capacities in this major center in China’s Western Region.
OECD retained Chreod to analyse shifts in Guangdong’s competitiveness, and to recommend strategies for regional development that could better realize the province’s comparative advantages. This was OECD’s fi rst Territorial Review in China. Our work enabled OECD to recommend far-reaching strategies to the provincial government for restructuring Guangdong’s economy, adjusting regional development policy, and focusing capital investment on improving accessibility to strategic centers, improving human capital, and strenghtening local innovation capacities.
ADB retained Chreod to conduct a year-long policy assignment on municipal fi nance reforms. Undertaken in the context of major reforms to governmental structures and the banking and finance system, the assignment identified current dysfunctions in municipal finance and recommended: a reassignment of tax and expenditure responsibilities; criteria for new municipal taxes and fees; policies for intergovernmental transfers; and policies for municipal bond issues on domestic capital markets.