An Outstanding Record

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We first visited Shanghai in 1989 when the city was in the throes of redevelopment, a response to Deng Xiaoping’s modernization programmes in agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defence. Becoming leader of the country in 1978, Deng Xiaoping and the post-Mao leaders immediately put to flight China’s old “closed door” policy, created four Special Economic Zones in South China, designated 14 coastal cities for redevelopment, and opened the redevelopment to both local and foreign investors. Shanghai was one of the 14 coastal cities and part of the new development of the Yangtze River Delta and the Yangtze River Basin. When we arrived in May 1989, the waterfront of the “Bund” (waitan), the downtown commercial area, was then undergoing rigorous redevelopment.

Our second visit was in 1994, one year after Pudong, then the undeveloped area opposite the Bund, began to be developed. On our arrival, it was a seeming forest of building cranes, scaffolding and infrastructure constructions, in fact, a flurry of building activities. The air was heavy with dust, as indeed in other urban areas undergoing redevelopment.

On our third visit, in 2000, the Pudong New Area, now the official name, was a going-economic concern, a sleek, ultra-modern development, with industrial, manufacturing, financial, trading, residential activities, among others. To those of us who had visited Shanghai only a few years before, the development, the scale and speed of it, were altogether bewildering.

Now we come again, six years later, it seems that the redevelopment of Shanghai is complete, or almost complete, and has fulfilled the dreams of the political leaders. It seems the city has become a modern, international trading-centre of the first order, a shining beacon in China’s southeast.

The development, not only of the Pudong New Area, but, as we have seen all over China―North, South, East and West, NE, SE, SW, NW―during the years we have been coming, is nothing short of the miraculous. It speaks eloquently of the genius or dexterity of the Chinese people, their hard work, their inventiveness and their tenacity. Their performance since the early 1980s may be likened to the sudden outburst of a volcano which had been lying dormant for years. They have performed construction feats that are absolutely astonishing:

―sending man into outer space safely and bringing him back safely;

―damming the Three Gorges of the mighty Yangtze River (third largest in the world) to control flooding, to provide electricity for the rest of the nation, to divert water via the Grand Canal, itself a magnificent early achievement, from south China to north China where it is needed for irrigation and industrial purposes―a spectacular feat;

―leaping gorges, ravines, large expanses of water with spectacular bridges, notably the 7,000 metre-long, double-decker Nanjing Bridge;

―tunneling lofty mountains with railways, even up to Tibet, so-called “Roof of the World”;

―firing up skyscrapers to kiss the clouds, an intelligent use of vertical space―Shanghai soon to have the tallest building in the world, a 101-storey World Financial Centre;

―covering vast tracts of land with freeways to facilitate freer movement of people and goods; (China now said to have the second most extensive highway network in the world)

―establishing and implementing a Western China Development Project, embracing 6 provinces (Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou), 3 autonomous regions (Ningxia, Xinjiang, Tibet), and the huge Municipality of Chongqing with over 30 million people, also encouraging foreign enterprises to participate in the development, comparable with the development of the Special Economic Zones in south China;

―putting an end to perennial famine in the country and housing its huge population of 1.3 billion―now every one is being housed and fed;

―making available to millions, rich and poor alike, university education, even as a so-called Third World country. And turning out trained engineers, designers and planners to meet existing demands. Also improving greatly the standard of living of millions of people, to say nothing of securing the admiration of developed countries and the inclusion of China’s membership in international organizations, like the World Trade Organization (WTO); also obtaining the globally competitive invitation to host the 2008 Olympic Games, and Shanghai to host the 2010 World Exposition;

―offering humanitarian aid (it sounds ironic) to the United States after Hurricane Katrina blatantly revealed to all the world the woeful lack of a well-developed, universal social system in the highly-touted American Dream … And so the list goes on.

All this and more since the early 1980! An outstanding record by any measure, absolutely impressive, and certainly enviable! It has unmistakably shown the outside world that China and its people are still able to produce wonders and inventions comparable with those they devised in earlier times, and from which the Western world profited so greatly. But wait for China’s hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games!

True there is much yet to be done in China, especially in the rural areas, and in tackling and overcoming the new and crippling problems that modernization has wrought or intensified, but all cannot be done at once, and a great deal has been done already. Indeed, we are greatly impressed by the economic progress your country and your city have made since the 1980s, and the whirlwind, meteoric, almost frightening speed of it, which has left the rest of the world almost completely stunned. Continued for the next decades under similar, relative stability and intelligent leadership, China’s growing world-power status should be greatly enhanced, and the new problems, numerous as they are, and gigantic as they seem, will in time be tackled and removed. That is the fervent hope of friends of China who are truly interested in the progress of the country. And there is already good news! At the recent meeting of the National People’s Congress, the government announced it will now be turning its attention to the development and improvement of the rural areas.

I have said it before and will say it again: we like coming to Shanghai, and always look forward to coming, for we know we have good friends here. Thank you very much for receiving us so graciously and for making such excellent arrangements for our stay.

These are excerpts of the speech Prof. Edmund H. Dale made at the banquet given by the Shanghai Municipal People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries on May 11, 2006.