China Emerging_ 1978-2008 - Xiao-bo , Wu [64]
The Three Gorges Dam.
In 2007, the world’s highest railroad connected Qinghai and Tibet. The photograph shows the impressive railroad bridge over the Lhasa River.
Tibetan antelopes running across the Qinghai–Tibet Railroad.
below it for six years. To general dismay, the index had fallen to 998.22 on June 6, 2005. However, fromJanuary2006onward, it began rising; in a short period of ten months, the index surged 800 points, a rise of over 70%. After the completion of the split share structure reform, the resurrection of the capital markets was very apparent, and people began to take savings out of the bank and invest them in shares. In October, for the first time in five years, savings began to show a decline. The Wall Street Journal warned in an editorial, “China’s rapid increase in foreign exchange reserves will lead to excess liquidity, which can lead to hyper-inflation, an asset-pricing bubble, and the over-granting of loans by commercial banks.”
Within half a year, these forebodings were all to come true. Before that time, however, the recovery of the housing market was also apparent. After the macroeconomic adjustments, real estate throughout the country stayed flat, but from the beginning of the year, the markets in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai took the lead in rising once more. The government attempted to keep the rising prices down and in order to keep the market in hand, issued one regulation that was particularly noteworthy: Of all the residential building projects that received permits after June 1, 2006, at least 70% should be apartments that were ninety square meters or less. Clearly, this was a rule that nobody could conscientiously follow and it was never enforced. In the second half of the year, the central government continued to take restraining actions, banks raised interest rates, foreign money was forbidden to “flip” properties, and officials in some cities where housing prices rose too abruptly were disciplined. None of this had the slightest effect on the continuing rise in prices.
The concurrent rise of stock market prices and housing prices is generally a cardinal sign of a boom. It is an indicator of the start of another cycle of what could be called irrational prosperity.
No other country on earth today can match China in terms of the magnitude of changes. When most people of China look around, they cannot detect any vestiges of the place where they grew up. The poems of the Tang(618–907)andSong(960–1279)dynastiesdepictsalandscapethatisthe opposite of what exists today. Foreigners know that China has become the manufacturing base for the world, but few people outside China know how
With the rapid urbanization of the country, the two words chaiqian, which mean “demolish, move,” can be seen in many of China’s cities and towns (November 2007).
A shop being “demolished and moved.”
this has affected the land. The winding roads of olden days have been made into straight, uniform streets, lined with massive, monotonous concrete high rises. The flying eaves, bridgesacrossstreams,andcorridors aroundhousesareimagesnowfound in memory only. In the past twenty years, around four hundred million people have been elevated from extreme poverty. This has been accomplished only as a result of extremely rapid urbanization.
An excavator leveling a building.
A worker using a steel hammer to smash the remaining steel structure of a building.
Experts have predicted that urbanization will continue. In the coming twenty years, another four hundred million people are expected to move to the cities. All of China is a massive construction site. The following statistics give some idea of the state of the country. The area of new buildings under construction every day in China roughly equals half of the total new construction underway on any given day around the world. The total floor area of buildings completed within one year in China is roughly equivalent to that