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leads a peasants' revolt, then becomes an all-powerful despot - were a rerun
of dynastic models. They might have been born there, but the Communists
distrusted Shanghai; associating it with imperialism, squalor and bourgeois indi-
vidualism, they deliberately ran the city down. The worst slums were replaced
by apartments, the gangsters and prostitutes were taken away for “re-education”,
and foreign capital was ruthlessly taxed if not confiscated outright (although
Chiang Kaishek did manage to spirit away the gold reserves of the Bank of
China to Taiwan, leaving the city broke). For 35 years Western influences were
forcibly suppressed.
Perhaps eager to please its new bosses, the city became a centre of radicalism,
and Mao, stifled by Beijing bureaucracy, launched his
Cultural Revolution
here in 1966 - officially a campaign to rid China of its counter-revolutionaries,
but really a way to regain control of the party after a string of economic failures.
Fervent Red Guards even proclaimed a Shanghai Workers' Commune, modelled
on the Paris Commune, but the whole affair quickly descended into wanton
destruction and petty vindictiveness. After Mao's death in 1976, Shanghai was
the last stronghold of hardcore Maoists, the Gang of Four, in their struggle for
the succession, though their planned coup never materialized.
The Shanghainese never lost their ability to make waves for themselves;
their chance came when following the death of Mao - and the failure of
his experiment - China's communists became
one-party capitalists
. Its
economic renaissance dates from 1990 when Shanghai became an autono-
mous municipality and the paddy fields of Pudong were designated a “Special
Economic Zone”. The pragmatic leader
Deng Xiaoping
declared an end to
the destructiveness of ideological politicking by declaring “it doesn't matter if
the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice” - though the dictum of his
that Shanghai has really taken to heart is “to get rich is glorious”.
Shanghai today
Having opened for business,
Shanghai's growth
has never dipped below
ten percent a year. The city has been torn up and built anew (locals quip that
its new mascot is the crane), and now has more skyscrapers than New York.
In fifteen years the population has almost doubled to 21 million people. Per
capita incomes have risen from US$1000 per year in 1977 to US$6000 in 2007.
Accounting for a third of China's foreign imports and attracting a quarter of
all foreign investment into the country, the city is the white-hot core of the
nation's astonishing boom.
As well as batteries of skyscrapers, there has been massive investment in
infrastructure projects
, most notably the Maglev train and the new, US$2
billion Pudong International Airport. Prestige ventures such as the Oriental
Arts Centre have joined high-profile projects such as the World Financial
Centre in expressing the city's breezy new swagger. With a booming new
stock
exchange
, its next target is to become Asia's biggest financial centre. And just
as Beijing is using the 2008 Olympics to focus on its development, Shanghai
plans to garner global attention as host of the
World Expo
in 2010, which is
expected to bring 70 million visitors to the city.
Of course there are problems. Shanghai's destiny is still controlled by outside
forces, today in the form of the technocrats of Beijing. Despite huge gains
economically, China is
politically stagnant
. Corruption is rife - more than
US$15 billion is embezzled annually from state coffers. Dissident voices are easy
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