Jin Mao Tower is located in the Pudong Development District, which is a peninsula located right across the Yangtze River from the old Shanghai city center, Puxi. In 1990, the Pudong Development District was the first financial district ordered by the central government to follow Chairman Deng Xiaoping as part of his open-door policy planning. The opening of Pudong was not only for its development. It served as a carrier for Shanghai's establishment as a global financial trade and shipping center, and aimed to become the bridge between China and the world. The government drafted many benefits and subsidies to attract foreign investors, hoping Pudong to become the next Hong Kong or Tokyo and leading the financial development in China.[1] Jin Mao Tower is located very close to the river bank, making it visible to people across the Huangpu River and becoming the visual focal point of Pudong: when it was completed, it was the tallest building not only in Shanghai, but also in China. It was the first skyscraper project that was constructed in the Pudong area, and when it was under construction, the whole Pudong area economically lagged behind the city center of Shanghai. No buildings higher than one hundred meters were built in the Pudong area and the population was only one-tenth of the total population of Shanghai. Hence the saying goes, “People want a bed in Puxi (the city center) rather than a house in Pudong”.[2] Because people underestimated the Pudong area, during the commission meeting the representatives from Shanghai government said they wanted this new building to become “the new face of Pudong, the new face of Shanghai, and even the new face of China”.
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The Woolworth Building was in a very similar location in New York, as its commissioner F. W. Woolworth (1852-1919) requested that the Cass Gilbert design an imposing monumental skyscraper as the landmark headquarters of his company that would “capture an entire urban audience by surprise with his seemingly sudden decision to build a gigantic and extremely visible Gothic skyscraper, the height of which topped all earlier records,” express the power and wealth of Woolworth Company, and  serve as a standing advertisement.[3] Therefore he identified the site of  Broadway and Park Place, right across from the Brooklyn Bridge, facing City Hall Park as the center of civic life in New York, so that the building would be visible from the whole lower Manhattan and even from New Jersey. It also demonstrates Woolworth’s civic-kindness to secure an institutional and a personal identity.[4]