International Trading Supplement: The Fast Lane

THE CITY THAT TRADE BUILT. Through most of the Cold War years, Hong Kong thrived as a capitalist banking and manufacturing city on the doorstep of isolated China and embattled Southeast Asia.

The former British Crown Colony is still an economic hub and a free-trade zone, several years after reverting to Chinese rule in 1997. Less well known than Hong Kong but just a few miles across the (still monitored) border lies the city of Shenzhen.

This former fishing village was designated as a Special Economic Zone in 1980 and has seen its population increase exponentially ever since. It is now home to 5 million people, an active stock exchange and an economy and transportation infrastructure that would probably be unrecognizable to someone who had not visited the city since 1980.

Residential dwellings in older parts of the city did not exceed seven floors high, as elevators and electrical wiring were not even designed into the structures originally.

No such limitations face the new office and apartment towers rising in Shenzhen, which are beginning to lure companies and residents away from Hong Kong’s more expensive neighborhoods.

A highway system slices through the city and radiates not only back to Hong Kong, but also to the growing city of Guangzhou (once known to Westerners as Canton) and the manufacturing complexes found throughout Guangdong province in southern China.

Shenzhen and other cities of Guangdong province have reaped the benefit of the decision by Chinese leaders in the late 1970s to welcome outside investment as a way to spur the nation’s economy.

A tour of these cities and the surrounding countryside provides startling examples of how dramatic the transition can be from an agrarian economy to an urban one.

BEASTS OF BURDEN. Prior to the opening of the Chinese economy in 1978, China may have been most curious to Westerners as a place where mechanization seemed largely absent.

Water buffaloes still tilled the soil, and even urban dwellers used bicycles in far greater numbers than motorized vehicles.

A visitor in 2005 would still find some of those pre-conceptions reinforced, especially in the agricultural sector. Bordering the clothing and toy factory complexes in China, farmlands continue to be cultivated using hand tools and water buffaloes.

Motorized tractors or other equipment are rarely seen, as farming techniques do not appear to have changed greatly with the economic reforms. Remote villages with unpaved roads, clothes being washed in running streams and small fields being tilled by hand provide a stark contrast to the bustle of Shenzhen or Beijing.

But choices in life for the millions of peasants who work the fields have changed. The manufacturing complexes of Southern China have created millions of jobs, with workers drawn largely from surrounding villages.

In many cases, however, these workers are not commuting in the traditional sense. Rather, many live in company housing on corporate-owned land adjacent to the apparel or product factory where they work.

The company town may seem like a throw-back to Americans, but the use of the concept—much like the frenzied construction of new housing and multi-lane highways—helps demonstrate the similarities of China today with America in the first two-thirds of the 20th century.

In terms of technology, mechanization and electronic communication are advancing rapidly in China.

A visitor to Shenzhen would see relatively few bicycles compared to the number of cars on the road.

Similarly, newspapers and magazines are more plentiful, radios and music players are becoming common, and the cell phone is ubiquitous in China’s cities.

Economically, Chinese citizens are beginning to enjoy choices. Whether these choices will be broadened to include civic decision-making power is a matter being studied by all those who conduct business with China.

WRITING ON THE SIDEWALK. Tian Tan Park in Beijing brings together traces of the Maoist principals enforced by China’s government since 1949 and the free market reforms introduced in the past 25 years.