Of all the cities on earth, the pace of civilizational transformation is most evident
here. With over 25,000 buildings standing 12 stories or more, it has more high rises than
anywhere else and is the most important economic engine in China. But there are real challenges
on the horizon for this city of 25 million: some that took a pandemic to fully emerge,
and others that grow more frightening with each passing year.
This is Shanghai, a bellwether of the 21st-century.
The most populous city in the People’s Republic of China
rises on the low-lying swamplands where the tributaries and lakes of the Yangtze
River Delta meet the East China Sea, and the vast Pacific Ocean beyond.
Founded in the tenth century, its easy access to the extensive Asian interior made it an ideal
location for those seeking to trade regionally and - eventually - with the empires of the West.
In the 1800s, after a prolonged struggle with imperialists who used subterfuge and
sabotage - like hooking millions on opium, China was forced to allow foreigners greater access to
its markets–and control over much of Shanghai. The city became a foothold for the British, French,
Americans, and Japanese, who took possession of designated areas in the city, called
“concessions,” where they established businesses that extracted great resources and wealth.
Many Chinese call this the “century of humiliation.”
Shanghai was essentially split into a “Chinese” half and a more modern European-styled “Western”
half home to around 35,000 foreigners. Despite this dysfunction, the combined area thrived and by
the mid-1930s it was one of the largest cities in the world with three million inhabitants.
Then, it was torn apart.
Shanghai is where the second world war truly began, as Japan
unleashed Blitzkrieg. The combination of siege warfare and aerial bombardment, followed by sniper
attacks and house-to-house fighting, produced the horrific scenes now associated with Europe,
but was first reported in China’s megacity. Despite this nightmare, a glimmer of humanity
still flickered in Shanghai, as evidenced by its unconditional welcoming of any Jews fleeing the
holocaust, one of the only cities in the world to stay open to them for most of the conflict.
The war’s aftermath brought the Communists to power. This forced many foreign businesses
to move south to independent Hong Kong. Despite this drain on capital and talent, the economic
heart of the People’s Republic of China remained in Shanghai, and for the next four decades,
this vital port city provided 70% of all the tax revenue that was collected and spent nationwide
by China’s central party, whose bureaucrats were ensconced in Beijing–1,100 km away.
This was an untenable burden on the Shanghainese, and in 1991 two of their local leaders seized a
rare opportunity to change things. After the bloody crackdown on student protesters in
Tiananmen Square in 1989, China’s Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping wanted new management in Beijing.
The reins of power were turned over to two former mayors of Shanghai:
Jiang Zemin, who succeeded Xiaoping as paramount leader, and Zhu Rongji, who became Vice Premier.
They declared that Shanghai would be the “dragon’s head” of China’s modernization–its
point of contact for the rest of the world. Taxes on the Shanghainese were slashed and foreign and
domestic investment was encouraged. The results were wildly successful, with the city leading
China to continuous economic growth of between 7 and 15 percent annually for more than two decades.
Virtually overnight Shanghai became a boomtown with a million construction workers
using 20% of the world’s supply of cranes to build day and night. Between 2011 and 2013,
the velocity and scale of urbanization across all of China meant that it consumed more cement
in three years than the United States did in the one-hundred years between 1900 and 2000.
This transformation has been more obvious in the Pudong New Area. What used to be a dense,
lively maze of lanes and alleyways is now the gleaming symbol of modern China. To get it done,
the Communist party forced everyone living there to permanently relocate to new suburban high rises
outside of the city center, then completely flattened the existing infrastructure.
Tonight, like every night, thousands will gather on the Bund and gaze across
the river at the futuristic, sterile financial district, a seductive display of China’s power,
but also of the CCP’s willingness to destroy what it doesn’t want to exist.
A lucky few live and work high in these towers, but people all across Shanghai seem to be better
off too in many respects. Consider this: a baby born in Shanghai today can expect to live to be
83, that’s ten years older than a baby born today in China’s rural western provinces.
This urban-rural gap can be traced to better health care in Shanghai
and to working conditions there, which have improved dramatically.
While the majority of city-dwellers are still monotonously manufacturing a wide range of
products, their factories are now safer than they were in the past. Life in urban centers
now offers a more promising path for the average Chinese family than life in agricultural areas.
The dominance of Chinese manufacturing, led by Shanghai, has allowed it to feed
the west’s insatiable appetite for buying stuff–consumption that was amped up in the
2000s by the proliferation of big-box stores in America, and then supercharged by Amazon.
Shanghai’s legions of workers are employed by entrepreneurs that draw on a broad technological
and scientific research community. The region’s chemical industries are fully integrated to
maximize efficient use of raw materials; its communication both within and between sectors
is excellent; and its machine and machine tool industry is world-class.
And then, of course, there is its dominance in shipping.
The port of Shanghai is, by far, the largest in the world. 10% of all container storage
capacity on Earth is located here, along the banks of the Yangtze River Delta.
The number of large ships in these waterways explains the high likelihood that at least
some of the objects currently surrounding you are stamped with the words ‘Made in China.’
But fast-paced development and economic growth have also significantly increased
pressure on workers in modern Shanghai. Urban life is not for everyone–and I mean that literally.
In China, every person is assigned a status - or hukou - based on where they are born: one
either has rural or urban hukou, and each unlocks different benefits and public services within a
province. This creates various social inequalities and rigidity of movement within China.
For example, Shanghai provides its young residents with urban hukou
a high-quality public education. In 2012, 15-year-old students there ranked first
in the world in math, reading, and science in a study done by the OECD.
Unfortunately, there are 350 million migrants with rural Hukou who have moved
to work in cities across China, including a third of the residents of Shanghai.
They have no access to free public education in their new cities and often have a gut-wrenching
choice: either leave their children behind in their home village to attend a much poorer school
or bring them along and risk not being able to afford a private education.
It’s a dilemma that helps explain why 70% of China’s population
has never attended a day of high school–the worst rate of any middle-income country in the world.
Of course, Beijing is fully aware of this
complicated problem. In the past it has declared its intention to end Hukou,
only to abandon the goal when it became clear how hard it would be. The Communist Party has
allowed some provinces and smaller cities to experiment with reforming Hukou, but
they’ve mostly tinkered around the edges of the policy without implementing meaningful reforms.
There is one major benefit of Hukuo: the degree of control it gives the Communist Party over the
size of its cities. In a country with 1.4 billion people - four times as large as the
US - strictly limiting the most-coveted public benefits essentially imposes a soft cap on how
large its most important cities can grow, helping Shanghai feel more like New York than New Delhi,
an overpopulated study in chronic mismanagement, as we explored in the previous episode.
Another challenge for the Communist Party has been Covid-19. Many Shanghainese were on board
with China’s “Zero Covid” policy of total lockdown and mandatory quarantines of the
infected in warehouse-like buildings, until it was abruptly applied to them this spring. Two years
into the pandemic, the people of Shanghai awoke to the reality that they are no different from
the rest of China–the authoritarian regime will absolutely use heavy-handed tactics, even in its
most important megacity, to force compliance with its policies–no matter how oppressive.
It’s unclear how badly this has hurt the Communist Party’s reputation.
But its extreme, inflexible response to the virus, its refusal to be open with the world
about how the outbreak first started, and its concealment of total case numbers and deaths,
are all raising serious doubts about the competence of the leadership in Beijing.
To make matters worse, an even more serious problem faces Shanghai in the long term,
one that threatens its very existence. As this map shows, Shanghai is the most vulnerable city
in the world to sea-level rise. The lower end - three meters - would put virtually the entire
area underwater by the end of the century, with many neighborhoods becoming inundated even sooner.
The megacity’s greatest benefit - its position along the shores of the low-lying Yangtze
River estuary - will become a liability on a scale few other cities in history have seen,
as its infrastructure sinks into the soft, sandy soil, and seawater penetrates its
groundwater supply, making it undrinkable. The region already faces widespread flooding
from frequent extreme rainfall events that will only continue to worsen over time.
Over the past few decades, the government has built hundreds of kilometers of storm walls
and drainage systems to protect Shanghai from the most extreme storms and floods. But the magnitude
of disaster Shanghai faces due to climate change will make most existing defenses obsolete. If a
functioning city is to remain where it currently stands, many buildings and infrastructure will
need to be completely reimagined in ways that we’ve never seen before. Or, the government
needs to begin planning and implementing a gradual retreat from the river delta.
Either way, the cost will be exorbitant.
Luckily, Shanghai is not the only city facing the effects of sea-level rise,
and there are now huge incentives to develop solutions to mitigate this global crisis.
Shanghai has already put some of them into practice, like its “sponge-city” park that
helps with flood control and water treatment, and its use of trees for cooling and water absorption.
Nearly a quarter of Shanghai is now covered in trees and the city aims to get to 50% by 2050.
The perils Shanghai must overcome to maintain its place as a leading city are daunting,
but it still has many advantages. The rest of China - and the world - continue to marvel
at its unprecedented achievements, and are eager to see it thrive for decades to come.
If you missed it, I profiled Delhi last time and will look at Los Angeles next.
To dig much deeper into each city in this series, become a member at TDC.video - linked below - for
my research links to the talks, books, and articles that inform each of these reports.
Until next time, I’m Bryce Plank.