A Shanghai city spokeswoman, who like many Chinese officials refused to give her name, said Shanghai was waiting for approval of the project by the central government. She would not comment further.

Walt Disney Co., which has set up office in a sleek new Shanghai office complex, has repeatedly emphasized that for now it is focusing on developing its theme park in Hong Kong, which opened in 2005.

“China is a priority for the entire company,” Disney Asia-Pacific spokeswoman Alannah Goss said in a statement Tuesday. “We have a continuing dialogue about a variety of Disney initiatives, including television, motion pictures and consumer products, of which theme parks are only a part,” she said.

Residents have been moved off farmland in Chuansha, a part of Shanghai’s Pudong district near the city’s main international airport, to make way for a 6-square-kilometer (about 2 1/3-square-mile) tract along the city’s airport expressway, the state-run magazine Oriental Outlook said in this week’s online edition.

“Once we have central government approval and a concrete plan and Shanghai Disneyland can begin construction right away,” the magazine quoted local economic committee official Qian Weizhong as saying.

But the state-run newspaper China Business Post said that the site for the theme park might be switched from Chuansha to Chongming, an island in the Yangtze river to the north of the city that is being developed as an ecotourism district.

The park would be built after 2010, when the city is due to host the World Expo, it said.

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