For a start, they say the new airport and the improved sea port will match Hong Kong's for capacity and efficiency. And then there is the manpower, which is greater, less costly and increasingly better educated. Most of all, though, there is the space advantage. Hemmed in by mountains, Hong Kong can expand only into the sea - a costly and increasingly disputed way of creating land. Pudong can grow as much as the Chinese economy needs it to.
Shanghai is too cramped.
Pudong was just sitting there, bare farmland ripe for development. Well, not exactly farmland. Pudong will develop into a major world city, making it competitive with Hong Kong and Tokyo. But everything in Pudong moves faster than you believe could be possible. Ron Gluckman is an American reporter based in Hong Kong, who wanders the Asian region for a number of publications, including Time's Asiaweek, which ran this story in July 1999.