SHANGHAI — For two decades Chinese officials and Walt Disney Co. have batted around ideas for a theme park in the eastern fringes of Shanghai, only to see them go nowhere.
"People have always been saying they'll build here," said Sun Jinbao, 61, a farmer near Zhaohang village, where several years ago Disney executives stood on the roof of a three-story building, peering out at the rice fields and wooded lands.
But now the excitement is building again. And this time, many people here and outside think it's just a matter of weeks, perhaps days, before a deal is announced.
Some Chinese are so confident that they've loaded up on shares of companies with interests in this part of the Pudong district where a theme park would be most likely to go up. Jielong Group, a printing firm that holds the rights to about 50 acres of land in the vicinity, has seen its stock price nearly double in the last month.
Others are building or expanding existing homes in the area, despite a ban on new housing development, and transferring registrations of family members from other locales -- all in hopes of enhancing potential relocation packages, which are typically based on home and household size.
"You want to buy land?" villagers ask when a visitor comes around.
The recent buzz has been fanned by Chinese media reports saying that Disney and Shanghai officials had come to terms, with the Burbank-based entertainment giant easing up on some of its earlier demands because of the current financial climate. A Disney spokeswoman in Hong Kong, Alannah Hall-Smith, responded that there was "no deal, no announcement."
But informed Shanghai officials, among others, believe that the project is pretty much settled. All that's needed, they say, is a stamp of approval from leaders in Beijing at a key economic planning session expected to be held this month.
"The meaning of introducing Disneyland to China right now is completely different from years ago," said Yang Jianwen, deputy chief engineer of Shanghai's Municipal Economic Commission, who was involved in the early planning of the project.
The reason: China's once-supercharged economy has slowed sharply in recent months, threatening social stability. With the world gripped in an economic downturn, analysts say Disney and Shanghai both stand to get a boost from a major development project in these hard times.
