Disney Denies Rumours About Beijing Theme Park

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

31 August 2001

After the Beijing Evening Post on Monday quoted unidentified sources as saying that entertainment giant Walt Disney had plans to build a theme park in Beijing ahead of the city's hosting of the 2008 Olympics, the company denied the rumours on Thursday.

"That report is totally erroneous," said chairman and chief executive officer Michael Eisner, when asked about the report by a guest at a business luncheon at which he had given a speech. At a news conference later, Eisner said he could conceive of such an idea so long as it did not compete with Disney's theme park in Hong Kong, which is due to open in 2005.

"China is a very large country. I'm sure someday there'll be a possibility to build another Disney theme park that'll be so geographically distant from Hong Kong it'll not compete," he said.

Disney's Hong Kong venture, which is being split 57:43 between the Hong Kong government and Disney will be the only nationalised Disney theme park in the world, and is an unexpected departure for the normally laissez-faire Hong Kong administration. But the SAR saw compelling economic reasons for competing to win the park. The project is expected to create thousands of low-skilled jobs in Hong Kong not only at the theme park but throughout the local travel industry. Unemployment in Hong Kong is concentrated among low-skilled workers.

Mr Eisner said the park would create 18,000 new jobs when it opens and eventually add 36,000 jobs to the economy. Hong Kong is now reclaiming land round Penny's Bay on Lantau island, the site for the HK$14.1 billion theme park which the territory hopes will give a strong boost to its tourism industry. The government is contributing more than HK$22bn (US$2.8bn) in equity financing, low-interest loans and public works spending, as well as the land. Land reclamation and related infrastructure will cost another HK$13.6 billion.

Hong Kong already attracts 13m visitors annually but the government hopes to see the number of visitors from mainland China increase dramatically, and the park forms one of the key elements in this strategy. Mainland Chinese tourists already make up 30% of all visitors to Hong Kong, and since the return of this former British colony to Chinese rule in mid-1997, much effort has been made to ease visa restrictions on mainland Chinese visiting Hong Kong. Disney President and chief operating officer Bob Iger, who was in Beijing and met Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji on Tuesday, said the issue of further easing travel to Hong Kong was discussed.

Eisner said Beijing's 2008 Olympics would give more visibility to Hong Kong and the park. "We hope people going to the Olympics will take a side trip and visit Disney," he added.

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