Shanghai, China, February 2018 - The opening up of China and the growth of a global city

For the first thirty years of my life, and the lives of most people born, like me, in the early 1950s, China was one of a small number of countries that we all knew existed but which we had little knowledge of and which we never envisaged being able to visit.  It was to all intents and purposes closed off from the rest of the world.   That closure was partly imposed by China itself, but it also came from outside – I don't remember any discussion of China in either History or Geography at school, and it featured very little in news media reporting either.  By my mid-teens what little I thought I knew about China had been derived from missionary stories taught at Sunday School, and from picture books that stereotyped the Chinese as rice farmers wearing conical hats and splashing through paddy fields all day. At secondary school I had a Chinese friend, but his parents had fled from the Revolution of 1949 in the company of the nationalist Chiang Kai-Shek and had arrived in the UK as refugees via Hong Kong. He seemed to know even less about China than I did – but I did learn to use chopsticks in the flat above the newsagency in Shepherd’s Bush in London where his family had ended up.

It was the Cultural Revolution, starting in 1966, that first stirred my interest, and that of those around me, in China.  I still have the ‘Little Red Book’ (“Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung”) that I purchased in the left-leaning Collets Bookshop in London that year. And more news reports started to filter out. But practical connections were very sparse.

My father once worked for a timetable publisher and I have inherited some of his old timetables.  The ABC World Airways Guide for December 1965 has only three Chinese airports listed as having regular commercial flights.  There were flights from Peking (such was its name in the listing) to what was then Canton - now Guangzhou - 3 per week; to Shanghai, 5 per week; to Hanoi, 2 per week; to Pyongyang, 2 per week; to Rangoon, 1 per week; and to Irkutsk, 4 per week with 2 of those operated by Aeroflot going on to Moscow.  The only destination from Shanghai was Peking / Beijing. But from Canton / Guangzhou there were once a week flights to Djakarta, Pnom-Penh and Dacca with the last of these going on to Karachi (Dacca was still a Pakistani city at that time, and the flight was operated by Pakistan International Airlines). Even 50 years ago this was an extremely limited menu of international travel possibilities, indicating a country that was still almost entirely closed to the outside world.

I was in Italy when Mao died in 1976, and not long after that two friends of mine actually visited China and the country started slowly to establish some detail in my mental map and ceased to be marked terra incognita. But the airline timetable I have for August 1979 still shows no flights from China to the UK.  By early 1984 there were 2 per week from Beijing but the frequency had only increased to 4 per week by the last timetable I inherited from my father - 1993. 

Today I have just returned from four days in Shanghai – my third visit to the city but the first during which I have had the chance to look round under the expert guidance of a local resident instead of primarily attending meetings.  In the various visits I have made to China over the years (I first went in 2007), I have only visited a few of the major cities of the east – Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing – so I can’t comment on the country as a whole.

But what an incredible transformation there has been in those cities in my lifetime, or even just in the last 40 years.  I can now take as ‘normal’ flying into Shanghai for a weekend of leisure, catching up with friends, and sightseeing – something that would have been inconceivable when I was starting on my career. (I should add that I was already in Hong Kong for work reasons this time, so didn’t have so very far to travel.)

Shanghai is clearly now a world city.  To stand on the Bund, the area of substantial early twentieth century buildings erected by the western powers, and look across the Huangpo River to the ultra-modern office blocks of Pudong on the other side is to witness a transformation that is well-nigh incredible.  Thirty years ago the other side of the river was little-used marshland.  Last time I was here, in 2014, I stayed in a skyscraper luxury hotel on that site; and a few days ago my Shanghai friend took me to the viewing platforms of the Shanghai Tower – the second tallest building in the world – from where we looked back at the Bund and beyond it at the old city centre with the low-rise shikumen housing districts pierced here and there by apartment blocks, office complexes, hotels and the other paraphernalia of a city that is playing on the global economic chessboard.

We rode the super-efficient metro, with its signs and announcements made in English as well as in the local language.  We ate in French as well as Chinese restaurants, including street food in our quest as well as formal meals.  I drank vodka cocktails with British friends who work in journalism and marketing in the city.  I stayed in a French-owned hotel but could have chosen establishments belonging to many other global brands.   Going round the Shanghai Museum on a wet Saturday I heard a myriad of languages from around the world being spoken.

But my Shanghai guide also led me into housing neighbourhoods into which foreigners rarely penetrate.  Nevertheless, the economy of Shanghai is now intimately connected to the global economy, so whatever is decided in the World Economic Forum in Davos, or in bilateral trade talks between China and partners around the world, inevitably affects the wealth and well-being of the 30 million or so residents of the city.  Yet Shanghai is still politically in a different position from other global cities outside China – it was explained to me how the government is steadily closing down some of the street food stalls in neighbourhoods where a different image is desired; how migration to Shanghai by anyone without a residence permit for the city can to some extent be controlled; and how the government is now seeking ways to turn the tide of rural-urban migration by supporting a range of mid-ranking cities in more rural areas to foster economic growth there.

To me, though, Shanghai is a wonderful vibrant modern metropolis – full of interest and with the boom growth of recent years overlaid on much older social, cultural and economic foundations that still shine through.  For most of my life I may never have envisaged going there, but now that I have started to get to know Shanghai I’m hungry to go back.