SHANGHAI, CHINA: 1990 - 2010 Twenty years of Pudong

 

The Pudong New Area is a symbol of China's reform and opening-up.

2010-4-17  

By Wang Jie and Yao Minji  

TWENTY years ago tomorrow, China proclaimed the development and opening-up of Shanghai's Pudong, then vast stretches of farmland and villages.

Today, the Pudong New Area is a forest of high-rises, a center of finance and possibilities and the symbol of China's reform and opening-up.

Even Disneyland is coming.

The place where the Yangtze River meets the sea is sometimes called the miniature of modern construction in Shanghai.

On April 18, 1990, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council announced the opening-up of Pudong, today called the Pudong New Area.

In the past two decades, Pudong accelerated its reform and development -- and established a model of seaport industry development by combining international thinking and local characteristics.

The dramatic change of the Pudong New Area can be seen not only in its spectacular appearance and financial industry, but also in the lives of ordinary people.

"Ten years ago, life was not that convenient," she says. "I often envied my colleagues in Puxi who could go shopping so easily, but there were few big shopping malls in Pudong."

-Christine Wu
35, female, white-collar worker

Wu is known as "New Shanghainese," referring to those out-of-towners who have made the city their home.

Born in Hefei, Anhui Province, Wu was drawn to the glamor of Shanghai and decided to go to Shanghai University.

Wu is now pregnant and says she is satisfied with her life.

Today Wu is proud that Pudong is in no way inferior to Puxi in terms of fashion and trendy living.

"I don't have to cross the Huangpu River for something special," she says.

The only thing that troubles her is the rising property price in the Pudong New Area.

"Because of the coming baby, I want to purchase a bigger apartment so my parents can live with us," she says. "But that' really hard to achieve."

Ten years ago, when Lelakul first arrived in Shanghai from Bangkok, she saw only the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and open land. There were no other tall buildings.

Lelakul is assistant vice president at Lotus Supercenter and since 2000 she has lived in the 22-story Haifu Garden community at Yanggao and Lancun roads.

"The changes over the past 10 years have been very dramatic. My apartment building was literally the only one in the area when I first moved in, but you can see all kinds of tall buildings in every corner of the area now," says Lelakul. "It has been changing all the time and suddenly accelerated after 2007."

-Rojanee Lelakul
36, female, corporate executive

Lelakul enjoys the increasingly more convenient life in Pudong with modern facilities -- nice restaurants, tall office buildings, luxurious bars, spas and other venues.

"It has also got cleaner and more organized as it gets close to the upcoming World Expo 2010 Shanghai," she says.

I enjoy my life pretty much thanks to the reform and opening-up of Pudong."
Sun Shengnan,
46, female, civil servant

Sun was born in a small rural village in Pudong. Puxi, on the other side of the Huangpu River, was too far away back then.

"I would be so excited if my parents took me to Puxi," she recalls.

At that time, it took almost half a day to get from Pudong to Puxi.

"I had to walk 20 minutes to the bus station, where there was only one bus that connected with the ferry to Puxi," she says.

The bus took an hour, the ferry took another an hour, and then she took another bus to her destination in Puxi.

View article...

Setbacks Stall Finish Of China's Massive Dam Project

November 22, 2009

The massive reservoir behind China's Three Gorges Dam was supposed to be filled to capacity this month. But landslides on the reservoir and water shortages downstream have delayed the process.

The dam is the world's largest hydropower project, and the government says it allows the country to burn 30 million fewer tons of coal a year. The dam is also supposed to improve flood control and navigation on the Yangtze, the world's third-largest river.

But unforeseen problems have surfaced, raising questions about the river's fate.

In Wushan county in China's Chongqing municipality, the dam has tamed the river's rushing currents, turning them into a 360-mile-long lake. Barges laden with coal and cruise ships with tourists glide through the placid, jade-green waters.

It's been 15 years since China began building the dam. The rising waters of the reservoir have submerged the old Wushan county town, just one of many along the river. A new Wushan has been built farther up the hill.

Tan Songxiang, a local official in charge of relocating residents, says the new Wushan is a big improvement over the old one.

"Ordinary citizens have reaped real benefits from relocation, and standards of living have improved in all respects," Tan says. "I've experienced it myself. When I was a student, my family lived five or six people to a room, with only curtains separating us. In the new town, I have my own home."

Tan denies widespread allegations that officials have embezzled relocation funds, and he says government audits prove his point.

Repeated Relocation

Local governments have already relocated 1.3 million residents to make room for the reservoir. Some residents have had to move several times.

Speaking in a friend's shack near the river, farmer Wang Chuanju says the Wushan county government relocated her and her husband to a piece of land that was later taken by the municipal government to build a road.

Wang says that inadequate compensation has left them so poor they are forced to pick food from the garbage.

"I signed a contract with the government to be permanently relocated there," Wang says. "If they don't like me complaining about it, then why did they relocate me there in the first place?"

Wang says that when she protested inadequate government compensation, police detained and beat her. Her husband, Zou Xinrui, says they are desperate.

"If I weren't so old, I might be out robbing, stealing and killing. Why? Because when people are driven past a certain point, there's nothing else they can do," he says. "I might even join some counterrevolutionary group just to fill my belly."

A Thin Layer Of Land

Many of the problems on the Yangtze's middle reaches come down to this: Too many people are living on the land and overwhelming its fragile ecosystems. The reservoir means there is now even less land.

An hour upstream in Fengjie county, farmer Fan Zhuxian tends to his fields. Before the reservoir was constructed, his fields were mostly level. Now, 70 percent of them are on steep hillsides.

Fan squats down to plant seedlings. Every blow of his small pickax seems to hit a rock. The earth here is a thin layer covering the mountains, and it is easily washed away.

"I try to hold the soil in place with stone barriers," Fan explains, "but when it rains, they just collapse."

Fan says his sweet potatoes only grow to a size somewhere between that of a golf ball and a baseball.

Dwindling Water Resources

An increase in landslides in recent years, caused by fluctuating water levels, has forced the government to go slow in filling the reservoir.

China now says it wants to double hydropower generation by the year 2020 to reduce its reliance on coal. But experts fear more dams on the Yangtze could lead to conflicts over dwindling water resources.

Pu Yongjian, a professor at the Sustainable Development Research Institute at Chongqing University, says local governments are keen on damming their sections of the river to generate energy and jobs.

"There's no solution to this problem. Local governments have to set goals to raise their economic output, and they have to reach those goals," Pu says. "This is a conflict between economic development and environmental protection."

What's needed is a holistic management of the entire river, Pu says. Otherwise, the mighty Yangtze — which China has tried for millennia to tame — could one day run dry before it reaches the sea.