Wanda’s 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) site in the city of Nanchang has an outdoor theme park and teacup-shaped buildings that house a shopping mall, cinemas, restaurants, a film park and the world’s largest ocean park.
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China’s Wanda Group on Saturday opened a 40-billion-yuan (US$6.1 billion) theme park in Nanchang, capital of eastern Jiangxi Province, as it seeks to cash in on people’s fast-growing appetite for leisure. Mr Wang said this month that Disney’s single theme park, which opens in Shanghai on June 16, won’t be a match for his Beijing-based conglomerate’s bevy of Wanda City projects set to open across the country.
Visitors take photos beside a dragon fountain at Wanda World.
He Jianmin, a professor of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said that Chinese companies should learn from Disney in terms of industrial chain, development mode, high-standard construction and global market strategy.
Earlier this month he told Chinese state television in an interview that Disney’s foray into China would crumble under more competitive pricing from his group, and warned that the “the frenzy of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the era of blindly following them has passed”.
Wanda, a leading commercial real estate developer in China, has turned its investment toward the entertainment and tourism sectors.
Wang said Wanda City Hefei will open in September, Harbin in 2017 and Qingdao, Guangzhou and Wuxi in 2018 and 2019.
People outside the main entry point to the theme park.
The Wanda Cultural Tourism City, spanning 200ha in south-eastern Jiangxi province, features a theme park, a movie park, an aquarium, hotels and retail stores, according to the company.
Disneyland Shanghai brings the number of theme parks run by the American company in Asia to three, the largest number on any continent.
Even so, there were signs of Disney’s presence in Wanda City. Thousands of tourists who paid 198 yuan for a ticket (about United States dollars 30) today’s opening were greeted by what looked like a woman in a Snow White costume as well as storm troopers, the armored soldiers from the Star Wars franchise owned by Disney.
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Li Yuebo, an analyst with Industrial Securities, said Wanda and Disney, different in many aspects, can both win rather than lose in China’s booming tourism industry as they are based in different regions.
