On 18 April 1990 the Chinese government decided to build on an agricultural area situated on the right-hand side of the Huangpu river and facing the Shanghai historical town centre a new district for the city, named Pudong. This was to include an office district, a high-tech citadel, a free-trade zone, a city agricultural park, as well as a number of other residential areas displaying a modern architectural style. Works started without delay, employing up to one hundred thousand workers, who often worked even on three shifts, seven days a week, if necessary with the aid of huge photoelectric cells.
This frantic period devoted to building was full of difficulties and accidents, also of a serious nature, but nothing managed to stop it, because the city was to come out of its long hibernation and set off in pursuit of the other large cities worldwide. By Christmas 2002, thanks to public and private investments, both from China and from foreign countries, amounting to almost 70 billion Euro, Pudong has become the most modern city, or (to be more accurate) the most modern town district in Asia, with the highest skyscraper, the most futuristic TV tower, an airport with 25 million passengers a year connected to the town centre by a magnetic levitation railway reaching a speed of 450 km/hour,

two suspension bridges complete with sci-fi interchanges linking it to the rest of Shanghai and 1,684,500 inhabitants, with both the highest per capita income and the longest mean life in the whole of China. But a huge plastic model on display at the Human Development Museum shows that this work is still in its early stages: dozens of skyscrapers are still missing, as well as three tunnels under the Huangpu river, three more airport runways, which are supposed to increase the capacity of Pudong International Airport to one hundred million passengers per year (sic) and a whole range of other science-fiction works. What most impresses foreign visitors is not so much the works themselves, supported by more than adequate infrastructural facilities (such as a large international library, 439 healthcare units and a modern School of Foreign Languages), but the speed at which they have been accomplished.

Those coming from the country where it takes twenty years to build the Seveso overflow channel and to redouble the Milano-Treviglio railway line, find it astonishing that all this building work has only taken some ten years. Of course, here the power of the government is supreme; there are neither inquisitive oppositions nor hair-splitting regional Administrative Law Courts, whereas the country abounds in cheap labour: however, these achievements would have nonetheless proved impossible without top entrepreneurial skills and a tendency to a “think big”, which possibly toady only China possess to such an extent.

Besides, it is no coincidence that over one hundred of the 500 largest companies in the world and fifty of the largest banks have hastily opened branch offices in Pudong for their Chinese subsidiaries and that in the hi-tech citadel you can already see the advertising signs of the greatest multinationals operating in the field. It is not a paradox to describe Shanghai, with its 14 million inhabitants occupying a 6,340 square metre area, “an extravagant city”. The town is striving to excel in every possible field, and above all in efficiency, wealth and culture.

Presentation booklets emphasise the fact that the city, with one eightieth of inhabitants, generates 5.2% of the whole of China’s GDP and accounts for 23.6% of its imports and for 25.5% of its exports. There is a shopping centre in the heart of the city, which is of course the kingdom of the new Euro multimillionaires, that is in no way inferior to the Faubourg St. Honoré in Paris, or the Fifth Avenue in New York or Bond Street in London, where trim youngsters spend staggering amounts of money. There is a nursery school for the new ruling class – charging fees of 2,000 Euro per year – where you can find four- and five-year-old children who can tell you in real time what 6 plus 8 minus 7 plus 6 plus 5 adds up to (as described in N. D. Kristof’s article in the New York Times). There is a new Stock Exchange which will soon be competing with Hong Kong for the domestic record and on which China as a whole is relying in order to complete its capitalistic metamorphosis.

There are at least thirteen extravagant luxury five-star hotels, which, also thanks to the great availability of manpower, attempt to meet any possible and conceivable requirements by their guests. There is a huge variety of restaurants, where you can have, at prices which do not exceed the international standard rates, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Indian or French meals.

There are almost fifty thousand taxis about, more than in Tokyo, São Paulo City or New York. There are colossal stores in which you can find anything that is produced throughout the planet, but also a multitude of markets where, for some mysterious reason, the same (perfect imitation) articles can be bought for one tenth of the price. There is a harbour which, in view of its traffic volume, is already the third in the world today, but will become the very first once the new oceanic berth currently under construction will have been completed, and China, as forecasted, will be the third economic power worldwide. The next goal the establishment is very strongly aiming at is the acquisition of the 2010 worldwide Expo, for which a broad area bridging the river, and occupied by factories and construction sites destined for demolition, has already been set aside. Even though chiefly projected into the future, and taking pleasure in flooding visitors with an outpouring of statistical data providing evidence of its extraordinary progress, Shanghai also shows consideration for its semi-colonial past: it has transformed the famous Bund, the riverside along which all the chief early 20th century buildings stand, and where once foreign presence used to be concentrated, in some sort of open-air museum brightly lit throughout the night, and in the Urban Museum underground it has meticulously rebuilt a street of the ‘20s, complete with small artisans’ shops and a British-style postbox.

Also worth seeing is a large old block of flats, where, “light-years” ago, the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held. Nobody goes further back, because in the early 19th century, Shanghai was only a large fishermen’s village situated in a “strategic” position near the mouth of the Yangtse river, which because of this happened to attract the attention of European peoples; in order to find a few pagodas dating back to an earlier age, you need to travel many kilometres towards the interior. Shanghai has towards the capital a peculiar condescending attitude, a bit similar to Milan’s attitude towards Rome. “The people in Peking spend their time chatting, while we work” is a concept you will often come across at various levels, and from the people’s conversations you will gather the conviction that, despite the central government’s investments for the Olympic Games in 2008, the difference in the per capita income which Shanghai’s inhabitants already benefit from is bound to increase. It is pointless to remark that, possibly, the city is rushing things, that many initiatives are viewed by outsiders as risky escapes forward and that in many sectors you can smell speculative ‘smoke’. For instance, many of the new 20/25/30-storey skyscrapers, almost all different from one another, which are gradually replacing the huts of yesteryear, still appear empty, since the majority of the population has neither the means to buy a flat (100,000 Euro for one hundred square metres in the best quarters) nor to rent one. “The important thing”, the municipal authorities state” is to create new residential facilities, by immediately switching from straw and bricks to the most advanced building systems. With our yearly 10% growth rate, the skyscrapers will soon find plenty of buyers”. There is a widespread conviction that the city, also thanks to its cultural liveliness, to its busy nightlife, to the quality of its schools and to its international calling, is attracting the greatest talents into the country and is therefore in any case bound to prosper. Furthermore, the administrators (at least so far) do not yet have electors breathing down their necks, because they have just got through indirect three-phase elections entirely controlled by the party.
Despite the frantic rhythm of investments and the imposing layout of the new quarters, the road system is still inadequate, both because of the river splitting the town in two, and because of the difficulties that even a totalitarian regime has to face in demolishing old settlements. In order to prevent the already chaotic traffic from getting completely out of control, the authorities have therefore adopted as a temporary measure a system which is attracting quite a lot of criticism: the number of new vehicles that can be registered each year in town is curtailed and the related plate numbers are put up for auction.
But, as wealth increases, and the new businessmen have a growing need for mobility, the demand is so high that licenses get paid up to 5-6,000 Euro, an amount which is of course increased by the price of the car. On the other hand, petrol is very cheap, which does not at all discourage circulation, and most large car manufacturers produce (or are preparing to produce) their vehicles in situ, under joint venture agreements with Chinese manufacturers. Authoritarian methods are also often used for urban redevelopment plans: when the demolition of an area is decided, the authorities invite the inhabitants to leave their homes within a month, by offering an alternative solution within a radius of 20 kilometres. If the deadline is not complied with, the distance switches to 40 kilometres, and so forth. Nobody however is left without a home. What is most impressive about Shanghai is the rhythm, caused by this itching to make up for the time lost while Mao pursued his utopias, and to jostle for position in the new globalised world. It is a rhythm which calls back to mind William’s warnings against the “yellow peril”, even though the Germanic emperor certainly could not have imagined an urban profile such as that of Pudong. This is an infectious climate that involves everyone, mature men and young students, multinational employees and building workers. The employers of young capitalist China expect a lot from their employees and parents expect a lot from their children. Kristof again relates that in the “No 2 Secondary School” (a boarding school similar to those we used to have in olden days, despite its slightly Soviet name), pupils study from 6.30 in the morning to 11:00 o’clock in the evening, with short breaks for meals and physical exercise, on Saturdays they have revision work from 9:40 in the morning to 5:10 in the afternoon, and on Sundays, the only day they are authorised to spend with their families, they have “self-assigned homework”, designed to improve in the subjects in which they feel weaker. When they are fourteen years old, they all speak and write in three different languages: Mandarin, English and (it goes without saying) the Shanghai dialect. Having started off so much later, compared with other large towns with which it dreams to measure its strength with, and with the handicap of belonging to a country which is enormous, underdeveloped and displaying a per capita income that is equal to one fifth of its own, Shanghai of course has a long way to go yet. When you leave Pudong or the historical town centre behind the Bund, and penetrate into suburbs in which millions of people live crammed together and more unemployed people pour in from the country every day, when you see busses overcrowded with an absolutely incredible number of men and women being taken to work to earn between three hundred and four hundred thousand lire a month, you realise that the Third World is still round the corner. But, if there is one town that can make it, that is most certainly Shanghai, scheduled to get ahead around mid-century.
(trasl.by Interpres)