A mixture of capital investment and tax incentives transformed the city. Its GDP has since grown 13 percent a year. Today Shanghai has arrived. The airport would make any American city proud, the business district is dominated by modern office buildings, thousands of construction cranes dot the city, and cars fill the streets. Beijing and Huaihai streets.
Pedestrians sport cellular phones.
While demonstrating China's enormous economic potential, Shanghai also shows how far the country has to go. Stores may be filled with Western goods, but local shoppers are sparse. A few blocks away from the Bund lie squalid alleyways in the old walled city, where the Chinese were once confined by their foreign overlords. Close outside of Shanghai lie rice fields worked by hand. Even the process of economic reform has been inconsistent.