Why the Shanghai boom will last for a while

Brilliance shopping mall in Hongqiao

Shanghai is making the best out of the Year of the Pig. Nay-sayers, who mainly look at the basic figures at the Shanghai stock exchange, keep on wondering when the miracle will be over. A few strolls into booming Shanghai might explain why the economic underpinning of its growth is more solid than those figures often seem to suggest.
Yesterday I went to visit a friend in a Hongqiao hospital where she just delivered a s son. That in itself is in Shanghai a vow of confidence. Partly triggered off by the year of the pig, maternity wards all over the city are packed and when you see the high number of very pregnant women in the subway you know this is going to last for the coming months. That will stimulate consumer spending in itself.
While walking from one of the new line 2 subway stations in Hongqiao to the hospital I passed the Brilliance shopping mall at Xianxia Road, a place where I had not been in ages. The mall was rather new, huge and packed with people.
Also yesterday at my own Tianyaoqiao Road, connecting the Longhua temple, via Shanghai Stadium with Xujiahui Square, a new shopping mall was opened: the Novel Place. The street has over the past few years already been dotted with shopping malls, but this is a major new one, famous restaurants, the Blue Frog and upscale City Shopping supermarket.
At both places huge new residential buildings have been erected, in the high-end of the middle class, bringing customers directly to the shopping malls. In terms of square meters some experts says that Shanghai's retail is having an enormous bubble, but I saw in both those places brisk business.
In the coming months Shanghai will see the number of subway lines more than double, from five to eleven, literally opening up even more parts of the city for economic development. Like all the nay-sayers I do not believe this can go on in such a speed forever. But for the time being we are very OK.