In an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune today, Philip Bowring writes that despite its glitzy facade, Shanghai is representative of the endemic problems plaguing the Communist Party: “As well as the most shiny example of China’s new ‘socialist’ construction, Shanghai is also an example of vast waste of public funds and the locus of the most extensive graft. It is the antithesis of what the document sets as the goals of the party: eliminating corruption and paying more attention to the rural areas, where 60 percent of China’s population still live… If you want to know why infrastructure is so deficient in the rest of China, why rural incomes have lagged, why rural education and health services have declined, come to Shanghai and see where public money has gone. ”
For the real Shanghai, look under the hood
Posted by Sophie Beach | Sep 28, 2004
