On several occasions people told me, with a somewhat superior sneer, that Beijing people are fixated on government while Shanghai people are dealing with real issues. But if you want to see the China of the future, go to Shanghai. I believe it. Of course, Shanghai has all the difficulties of any large urban area. Sprawl and pollution are serious problems.
Traffic can be a nightmare.
Rural people come to the city hoping for a better life and end up being one step up from homeless. For example, on the street on which the Fudan University guesthouse was located, a number of twenty-something men had little signs propped up on the sidewalk telling of their skills and hoping for work as day laborers or carpenters or whatever. I was told that many of them come from Sichuan and other poorer provinces. One person estimated that this floating population in Shanghai totals 3 million. Technically Chinese cannot move from the location of their official domicile but since the rules have been relaxed in the last decade or so, a lot of rural people in particular come to the cities to find work.