With every city in China looking to attract investment, so each must try to stand out from the crowd. For Nanjing, the latest initiative at such is the release of creative posters promoting five new industrial landmarks upon which authorities are pinning the city’s economic future.
The new landmarks were rolled out last week as part of Nanjing’s urban development vision that is to build a “famous innovative city and beautiful ancient capital”. Specifically, the landmarks comprise Alternative Fuel Vehicle, Integrated Circuit, Artificial Intelligence, Software & Information service and New Pharmaceutical & Life Health.
According to a press release from Invest Nanjing, “The design closely revolves around Nanjing innovative city and various industrial characteristics, and integrates Nanjing cultural elements, with fresh and bright colours and full sense of science and technology.”
“In the future, Nanjing will continue to pool global innovation resources, continuously release reform dividends, continue to optimise the business environment, and promote the development of high-quality industries with high-level investment.”
Soup as a Reference to Corruption
While the five new posters fall quite a way short of international design standards, they do illustrate a new appreciation on the part of authorities for the importance of adopting procedures common in the rest of the world that help bring understanding to an international audience.
China has never been very good at explaining herself in ways that western countries understand, often relying on Chinese cultural metaphors that leave foreign audiences confused as to the true message. The five industrial landmarks launched by Nanjing have a clear meaning that show how far China has come since the ambiguity of previous expressions, at both the local and national level.
In one example of the former, “Four dishes and one soup” was in the past decade the slogan coined to encourage frugality at the dinner table by government officials, as well as other excesses that often went hand in hand with corruption.
This year, the latter has spun out, “The new four” that is another reference to Nanjing’s focus on the new pillar industries of new infrastructure, new consumption, new industry and new city.
It is the very specificity of the five new industrial landmarks that stands it out from its competitors, and such may also go quite some way toward helping Nanjing fend off competition from other cities across the Yangtze River Delta and beyond for that all-important investment.
