SHANGHAI- Walt Disney Company is set to begin construction of a theme park in China's commercial hub of Shanghai on Friday, sources close to the matter said Thursday.

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A ground-breaking ceremony and a news briefing are scheduled to be held Friday morning. Details about matters, such as the duration, scale and investment, will be released at the news briefing, according to the city government.

The agreement for the project was signed in November 2010. The new theme park will be the first Disneyland on the Chinese mainland and the fourth outside the United States, after Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

The cost for the first phase of the project is expected to amount to 24.5 billion yuan (about $3.74 billion), Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng said on the sidelines of the annual parliamentary session in Beijing in early March.