SHANGHAI will build a major theme park by 2020 but has yet to decide on any specific project, a district official said yesterday, discounting a media report that plans for a Disneyland park in the city had been revived.

“A theme park is part of Shanghai’s blueprint, but it could be either a foreign park or a Chinese one,” said Qian Weizhong, head of the economic committee of Shanghai’s Nanhui district, where the theme park will be built.

The official China Daily yesterday reported that Shanghai had received positive feedback from the Central Government about a Disneyland project and that preparations were going ahead full steam.

Shanghai government spokeswoman Zhang Qin said a Disneyland park had not received the necessary nod from the government. “We have not yet got Central Government approval for the Disneyland project,” she said.

Plans for a Shanghai Disneyland emerged in 2005 but were suspended when the city’s Party boss Chen Liangyu was implicated in a corruption investigation last September.(SD-Agencies)

Walt Disney has been exploring options for a theme park outside Shanghai amid concerns it may not get support from the Central Government for the Shanghai project, sources familiar with the issue told reporters in December.

Disney signed a statement of intent to build a Disneyland on the mainland in 2002, and then set up a venture with Shanghai’s Lujiazui Group to develop the site, which would be about 4.7 times the size of Hong Kong’s Disneyland.

The mainland plan was soon suspended, partly because of concerns that the Hong Kong park, which opened in 2005, would suffer, the ((China Daily))) reported.

(SD-Agencies)