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Peking officials are taking steps to control Shenzhen's development. High-tech companies are being wooed with tax breaks, and in an effort to slow down construction, taxes have been levied on those who own apartments but do not live in them. The government will find it more difficult to cool the tremendous energies that have been released by the boom. In a country where patience is a hallowed virtue and time a bountiful commodity, the people of Shenzhen are in an uncharacteristic rush. "The ringing of a doorbell makes me shudder," confessed a recent letter writer to a Shenzhen youth newspaper. He went on to complain about how the visits of his friends cut into his day. If Shenzhen has faltered partly because the Chinese expected too much too fast, the city also owes its very existence to that same impulse to get things done now. Shenzhen proves that the vitality is there, waiting to be properly tapped.
SHANGHAIWhen Peking announced this summer that Jiang Zemin would replace the avuncular Wang Daohan as Shanghai's mayor, the choice seemed a bit odd. No one doubted that Jiang, 59, was a man of high accomplishment. A Soviet-trained electrical engineer fluent in four languages, Jiang distinguished himself in China's Administrative Commission of Import and Export Affairs for three years before becoming, and excelling as, the Minister of Electronics Industry. But Jiang, as he is the first to admit, had never run a municipality before, let alone his country's largest industrial city (pop. 12 million). "I'm inexperienced," he says with attractive modesty. "I'm a jack-of-all-trades and master of none."
The central government chose Jiang because it was deeply frustrated with Shanghai's sluggish response to Deng Xiaoping's economic dreams. Almost three years ago, at Deng's urging, the city was given extraordinary freedom to handle foreign trade and investment. No longer was prior approval from Peking necessary to launch export programs. The city could enter into joint ventures with foreign countries, raise international capital and invite bids for construction projects. If all went well, Shanghai, already responsible for one-sixth of China's foreign-exchange earnings and one-eighth of its industrial production, would emerge as a sort of hybrid Wall Street and Ruhr Valley.
But Shanghai, once considered China's most progressive and cosmopolitan city, has fallen behind Peking, Canton and even Chongqing and Shenzhen in embracing the reforms. Shenzhen has set up more joint ventures (150, in contrast to Shanghai's 90), while Canton, one-third Shanghai's size, has more private enterprises (100,000 vs. 90,000). At this rate, Shanghai is in danger of losing its traditional role as the commercial and industrial hub of China. "There is an evident lack of creativity and drive," complains a middle-level city official. "We may have been safe and steady, but the pace of reforms has just been too slow."
If skylines could talk, Shanghai's would echo that judgment. While Peking and Canton boast modern hotels and office towers, Shanghai looks frozen in time, a black-and-white photograph from the 1930s. The buildings along the Bund that housed the great British trading firms and banks before the 1949 Communist take-over still stand, but now they are sooty and decrepit, ghosts from another era.