Howard French reports from Chongqing on the building of a megacity, which is attracting 200,000 new residents a year:
China has built megacities before, of course.
The country’s rich east abounds with them, strung along the coast from Tianjin in the north to Shenzhen in the far south like so many pearls.
But the swift rise of Chongqing represents a departure: the fruits of a major push by the government in Beijing to spread the fruits of China’s economic boom to the country’s vast interior, home to three Chinese in four. A consensus has emerged among Beijing’s leadership that the way to ease poverty in the interior is to encourage people by the tens of millions to abandon the land for the cities. [Full text]
See also a run-down on Chongqing’s Investment Zones from the All Roads Lead to China blog.
