This was supposed to be the site of Dongtan, the world's first eco-city, a paradise of sustainable living that would house half-a-million people and set an example to the world.
So impressive were the groundbreaking plans, drawn up in conjunction with the British engineering firm Arup, that Tony Blair himself helped launched the project in 2005 with Hu Jintao, the Chinese president - and earlier this year Gordon Brown pledged that it would be the model for similar towns in Britain.
"Britain and China will lead the world in the creation of eco-cities," the prime minister boasted.
However an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed that Dongtan is still nothing but a pipe dream. The greenfield site, a lush area three quarters the size of Manhattan, remains untouched - and planning permission won by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC), the property developer which commissioned Arup to design and build the city, has now lapsed.
Under the original plans the waste from rice paddies around Dongtan would be burned to power people's homes, and the sewage from the city would then fertilise the fields. Solar and wind power would help fill any shortfalls and all transport within the city would be powered by hydrogen or electricity.
Arup's plans envisaged 400,000 people living there by 2010, but Yan Zhouyao, a local farmer whose fields lie inside the projected building site, said: "I've never heard of it."
Mr Yan's water buffalo graze on the pristine wetlands that border the Dongtan zone - themselves now a thorn in the developer's side. Environmentalists argue that any building work could have a serious impact on the rare birds that visit the area.
Tundra swans, hooded cranes and black-faced spoonbills are some of the 34 protected species which flock there. Two years ago, a black stork was spotted there for the first time since 1929. There are thought to be no more than 1,000 of them worldwide.
The British company has now backed away from its original timetable. "There is no time pressure on when to develop Dongtan," said Roger Wood, the project manager at Arup.
In fact Dongtan hit the rocks after its main sponsor, Chen Liangyu, the city's Communist Party boss and a member of the politburo, fell from grace in September 2006. Mr Chen, who was educated at Birmingham University courtesy of the British government-funded Chevening Scholarship scheme, was sentenced in April to 18 years in prison for fraud.
Because Dongtan had been under Mr Chen's aegis, it became a political hot potato and nobody within the current Shanghai administration is now willing to touch it.
"Every year in Shanghai you have to renew your planning permission and we are still waiting for permission to come through," said Mr Wood. He also suggested that new building projects had slowed down dramatically because of the current financial crisis.
Despite Dongtan's demise, Mr Brown has continued to promote it as a vision of the future. In February, the prime minister visited Shanghai and said: "I want to congratulate all those involved in making possible the Chinese-British partnership that will eventually lead to 400,000 people living in Dong Tang [sic]."
Notably, Mr Brown did not actually visit the site of Dongtan during his trip to Shanghai, despite Chongming Island lying only 45 minutes away by boat.
The plans for Dongtan have helped to raise Arup's profile considerably in China, allowing it to bid for other prestigious projects. The company has also vigorously promoted its eco-credentials in workshops and conferences around the world.
Mr Wood recently gave a keynote speech at the "3rd Annual Leaders in Construction Summit" in Dubai, entitled Dongtan, China: The Future of Eco-Cities. He said the promotion of Dongtan was part of a "knowledge transfer" to encourage as many people as possible to think about sustainability.
However, after years of milking the glory of designing "the world's first eco-city", Mr Wood began to distance Arup from Dongtan. "We are simply the engineers of a project and work to the programme given to us by our client," he said.
Instead on Chongming Island, which is 45 minutes by ferry from Shanghai, a rash of building has begun around the Dongtan site to cash in on a road tunnel that is scheduled to connect the island to the mainland next year.
Many of the new high-rise apartment blocks are marketing themselves as "eco-cities", borrowing the language of Dongtan but few of its environmentally friendly principles.
Instead, at "Yingding eco-village", tourists can take boat rides, go fishing and enjoy "cockfighting and goatfighting" displays.
At the Ecological Chen Jia New Town, an enormous complex blocks of flats that will eventually house 26,000 families. Ding Tai'an, a 54-year-old former farmer, puzzled over what an "eco-city" might be.
He and his wife were among the first people to move in, 18 months ago. At the entrance to the block, a billboard advertised the development with a picture of the sea and Chongming's new suspension bridge. "Beautify the Environment of Villages and Towns. Build an Ecological and Model Hometown," it said.
But he couldn't put his finger on what the "eco" credentials of his new home were. It is not powered by renewable energy, nor is it built to any particular standards. "For us, ecological means living in an area which is a bit more green than normal," he said eventually. "Somewhere where there are trees".
