Riverside watchdog established to safeguard consumers' rights
A bird's eye view of the Xuhui riverside area, known as the West Bund, which will completely open to public by the end of the year.
Xuhui District on Thursday established the city's first market watchdog targeting the Huangpu River waterfront to safeguard food safety and consumer rights.
Visitors to the Xuhui riverside will receive "quick responses" from the new Xuhui waterfront market supervision station after lodging complaints about travel agencies, restaurants or other services covering the riverside region, the Xuhui government said.
The riverside area, part of a citywide development campaign, is aiming to become the “world's outstanding riverbank.”
Law enforcement officers at the station will try to settle issues "within 20 minutes to avoid spoiling the mood of travelers from across the world," said Shen Qiang, director of the new station.
It will also cover product quality, commodity prices and intellectual property rights along the 8.4-kilometer riverbank, which will completely open to public by the end of the year.
The riverbank is part of the city's total of 45km of waterfront running between Yangpu and Xupu bridges.
Previously, the riverside area in Xuhui, known as the West Bund, was jointly supervised by five market supervision stations based on different subdistricts.
The authority has rearranged the jurisdictions to make the "law enforcement ability be in accord with the global position of the waterfront region," said Yu Xiaohong, director of the Xuhui market supervision bureau.
The practice is expected to be promoted citywide to riverside regions in four other downtown districts.
Construction has started on over 2 million square meters of projects on the West Bund, including seven theaters with a total of 10,000 seats.
The city government has said Shanghai’s world-renowned riverfront will equal the Left Bank in Paris and the Thames Embankment in London.
Xuhui is redeveloping its 9.4-square-kilometer waterfront area — a former industrial base for the city's earliest industries. The area covers the West Bund Culture Corridor, the Museum Mile, the West Bund Media Port, Shanghai Dream Center and other key projects.
Construction has started on over 2 million square meters of projects, including seven theaters with a total of 10,000 seats, said Li Zhonghui, president of the West Bund Group who is in charge of the riverside development.
"The Longhua area has become an international commercial, tourism and cultural hub from an old residential community," Li said.
Nearly 80 percent of the West Bund area belongs to the Longhua Subdistrict, a community named after the city's historic Longhua Temple and Longhua Airport. The area with 56,000 residents has many markets and restaurants that require a more intensive supervision after the official opening of the West Bund, said Dai Lihao, director with the subdistrict.
Furthermore, the new supervision station will also serve companies based in the riverside area on registration and future development, Shen said. A large number companies, especially those involved in information technology, life science, health, culture and entertainment, have based themselves in the West Bund.
The West Bund Media Port, to be completed by the end of 2020, will be the core of a central business zone of culture and media, housing an array of well-known enterprises, such as Tencent, Hunan Television, Wonders Information, and Yoozoo.com, according to the West Bund Group.
With a series of cultural endeavors, such as the Long Museum West Bund, Yuz Museum, Shanghai Center of Photography, Tank Shanghai Art Park and Start Museum, the West Bund Museum Mile is beginning to take shape to become a major culture and art cluster in Asia by the end of 2020, according to the district government.
France's Pompidou Center will hold a five-year art exhibition project with the West Bund Group at the Huangpu River waterfront from 2019.
