REPORTER: Hutcheon
Morning on the river. Sixty million people trying to get rich in new Shanghai.
This is a city that has lived, died, and now lives again. Today, it's one of China's richest cities, but to see it at its best, you need only pay 30 cents to cross the Huangpu River on the cheapest ride in tide.
When I first came here in 1993, Shanghai had a spectacular riverfront vista known at the Bund, crammed with the grand European buildings of last century. Today, the city reaches outwards and upwards as its leaders plot Shanghai's transformation into a 21st century metropolis.
HUANG JIMING: We did research on other big cities of the world like Paris, New York and Tokyo. Shanghai has a grand aim to become an International economic, finance, trade, and shipping centre.
But a city is more than skyscrapers and infrastructure, it's also its people. And not all of Shanghai's people share the grand vision.
In the thirties, when old Shanghai, a foreign treaty port, was in its prime, the city was flooded with foreigners and their money.
Many Chinese, like the Europeans, became rich. And the traditional Chinese dress, the Qipao, became a hallmark of style.
ZHU HUNGSHUNG: When I first came to Shanghai I was very young. I was about ten years old.
Master Zhu Hongsheng, now in his eighties, was drawn to the city as a tailor's apprentice for the burgeoning qipao trade.
ZHU: When we made qipaos for them we didnt; just make one or two at a time we made several. They would give us more money. They didnt care about the money.
From its heady days of style and commerce, the city fell into decline. First came the Japanese invasion.
NEWSCASTER: In Shanghai, as in Spain, the streets that formerly were used for peaceful trade and transport, now tremble beneath the rumbling wheels of war.
Then the cosmopolitan city of wealth and decadence was finally crushed by communism.
The city stagnated for 40 years, until Deng Xiaoping decided to throw off the cobwebs, and ordered the city to open up.
For Master Zhu and the Qipao, it meant life started all over again. Drawn out of retirement to meet the demand, he's never had it so good.
ZHU: For us poor people, life now is better than before. In the past, the poor felt that they were inferior to others. Now, our social status is different and we are equal.
Shanghai's rebirth has attracted Chinese from all over the nation. They began flooding in to a city they believed could work miracles. One of them was Mary Gu.
MARY GU: Nice little area, not too many people. Normally this is an area like for people like me.
REPORTER: What does that mean?
MARY: Our age. Not like those teenagers. People who make a reasonable salary.
Mary Gu is in her thirties and works for one of Shanghai's many foreign managed luxury hotels.
MARY: I came to Shanghai in 1990. Before that, I was living in my home town all my life. And I was always fascinated by the lifestyle of Shanghainese. They live a very busy life, you know, everything is very fast. They think Shanghai is the best place to live in the world.
This is one of the new shopping precincts which have sprung up to cater for the new middle class, people like Mary Gu. Two years ago, the scale of construction was so huge it was said, Shanghai had one quarter of the world's construction cranes.
Mary says it won't take long before the city becomes an international player, simply because of the can-do mentality.
MARY: They know they can do better than other cities in China. And I think people were going for that stage, that they becoming to realise they have to be more flexible, more resourceful, and try a little bit harder to be successful.
But in the headlong rush to build more shops and offices, most of old Shanghai is being flattened, and old residents aren't happy.
Bei Nianzheng and her family live in an incredible mansion, bought by her grandfather in 1911. She has fond memories of growing up here.
BEI NIANZHENG: It was cool during the summer because the house was very big. We like to play and walk on the floor barefoot. My memories of my childhood are so joyful. Some of the woodwork was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but we had it replaced after that.
REPORTER: Oh, I see .
In China today, it would be rare for even senior leaders to live in a home as opulent as this. The house was considered to be of such heritage value, that some years ago it was granted a protection order.
But, as Miss Bei shows me, the rush for development is now so strong, the city has changed its mind.
The family home stands in the middle of a demolition zone. It's part of a proposed green belt that's already well advanced. In fact, the Bei family home is the only thing still standing in what not so long ago was a quiet residential suburb.
BEI: When I heard the house was going to be torn down I felt very distressed and sad. If the government confirms that this house wont be protected anymore, we need a reasonable explanation and solution. That's how we should handle this.
But a visit to Shanghai's urban planning institute. The institute has a visual display of the city government's vision of tomorrow's Shanghai.
Thousands come here hoping to find their own few millimetres of space still intact. This is the green belt where Miss Bei's house is now located. But Miss Bei's house isn't there.
Chief engineer, Huang Jiming, says doubling the amount of greenery per person is a central planning priority. Just five hundred historical buildings in all of Shanghai are scheduled for protection.
HUANG: There were some shabby houses. We moved about 3.6 million citizens out of slums. Together with the development of the city, these old and shabby houses must be demolished.
Shanghai's transformation into an international trade hub is certainly startling. When I first came here in 1993, Pudong, east of the river, was little more than a giant paddy field.
Today, it's full of sprawling foreign managed factories and largely empty skyscrapers. But chief engineer Huang believes these won't take long to fill.
HUANG: To construct an international economic financial trade and shipping centre is the aim of our planning. But during the course of constructing a metropolis we think that the people living and working in this city should have a better environment. Whats more, we will focus more on human beings our city will serve the people.
You don't have to stray too far to see that not everyone supports or prospers from such a rapid evolution.
MADAM CHEN: When the government came to demolish the houses they cut off our water.
Like the Bei family, Madam Chen has found the city planners didn't have room for her home.
CHEN: They cut off my tap water, so we had a well dug. We now drink well water. We cant afford bottled water, at dollars a bottle three bottles a day. Life is so hard.
Already the other 94 families in the area have been moved out. Madam Chen, now widowed, says her family -- all former state workers who are now unemployed -- can't survive without the rent from the four houses they owned in this block.
CHEN: I dont care. No matter how much better Shanghai becomes when I go to buy vegetables I only get some leaves. My life is hard and difficult. I do steal and rob. I have no choice.
For winners in Shanghai's reformation, the choices are expanding. Master Zhu now believes his twilight years are filled with hope and promise.
ZHU: After liberation, I did not have money, but my social status was improved. Workers were able to make money and have a fair life theres no difference between human beings. Nowadays our country is becoming stronger and stronger. The ordinary people feel joy in their hearts.
But my delight at hearing of Master Zhu's new lease of life was to be short lived. The interview was cut short by the police who ordered an immediate halt to the filming.
REPORTER: Is there some problem?
The visit from the police resulted in two hour interrogation. I was ordered to write a self-criticism because I conducted an unauthorised interview without the permission of the city government. The ABC crew was placed under surveillance and we were ordered to leave Shanghai the next morning. So, even in China's most open and free-thinking city, the tentacles of the state are never far away.
Any notion of progress as an engine for openness now felt as empty as the grandiose buildings.
MARY: I think maybe it's a little bit too aggressive, because I know, you know, maybe we have a go in a couple of years, we want to be this or we want to be that; either New York in Asia, or the second Hong Kong or something like that. But I think one thing that is important is the people who live here. Whether they are ready for that or not. I can see of the old people, they miss the old part of Shanghai and they dont want to see that going away.
Shanghai may be able to build enough to impress international investors and create a new group of winners in its march towards economic progress. But for the losers in the game plan, the benefits offered by this government may take some time to filter down through the heavy hand of state control.
For me, the new Shanghai still holds on to too many vestiges of the old communist era. Suspicious of criticism and an unequal power balance between the government and the governed.
Morning on the river. Sixty million people trying to get rich in new Shanghai.
This is a city that has lived, died, and now lives again. Today, it's one of China's richest cities, but to see it at its best, you need only pay 30 cents to cross the Huangpu River on the cheapest ride in tide.
When I first came here in 1993, Shanghai had a spectacular riverfront vista known at the Bund, crammed with the grand European buildings of last century. Today, the city reaches outwards and upwards as its leaders plot Shanghai's transformation into a 21st century metropolis.
HUANG JIMING: We did research on other big cities of the world like Paris, New York and Tokyo. Shanghai has a grand aim to become an International economic, finance, trade, and shipping centre.
But a city is more than skyscrapers and infrastructure, it's also its people. And not all of Shanghai's people share the grand vision.
In the thirties, when old Shanghai, a foreign treaty port, was in its prime, the city was flooded with foreigners and their money.
Many Chinese, like the Europeans, became rich. And the traditional Chinese dress, the Qipao, became a hallmark of style.
ZHU HUNGSHUNG: When I first came to Shanghai I was very young. I was about ten years old.
Master Zhu Hongsheng, now in his eighties, was drawn to the city as a tailor's apprentice for the burgeoning qipao trade.
ZHU: When we made qipaos for them we didnt; just make one or two at a time we made several. They would give us more money. They didnt care about the money.
From its heady days of style and commerce, the city fell into decline. First came the Japanese invasion.
NEWSCASTER: In Shanghai, as in Spain, the streets that formerly were used for peaceful trade and transport, now tremble beneath the rumbling wheels of war.
Then the cosmopolitan city of wealth and decadence was finally crushed by communism.
The city stagnated for 40 years, until Deng Xiaoping decided to throw off the cobwebs, and ordered the city to open up.
For Master Zhu and the Qipao, it meant life started all over again. Drawn out of retirement to meet the demand, he's never had it so good.
ZHU: For us poor people, life now is better than before. In the past, the poor felt that they were inferior to others. Now, our social status is different and we are equal.
Shanghai's rebirth has attracted Chinese from all over the nation. They began flooding in to a city they believed could work miracles. One of them was Mary Gu.
MARY GU: Nice little area, not too many people. Normally this is an area like for people like me.
REPORTER: What does that mean?
MARY: Our age. Not like those teenagers. People who make a reasonable salary.
Mary Gu is in her thirties and works for one of Shanghai's many foreign managed luxury hotels.
MARY: I came to Shanghai in 1990. Before that, I was living in my home town all my life. And I was always fascinated by the lifestyle of Shanghainese. They live a very busy life, you know, everything is very fast. They think Shanghai is the best place to live in the world.
This is one of the new shopping precincts which have sprung up to cater for the new middle class, people like Mary Gu. Two years ago, the scale of construction was so huge it was said, Shanghai had one quarter of the world's construction cranes.
Mary says it won't take long before the city becomes an international player, simply because of the can-do mentality.
MARY: They know they can do better than other cities in China. And I think people were going for that stage, that they becoming to realise they have to be more flexible, more resourceful, and try a little bit harder to be successful.
But in the headlong rush to build more shops and offices, most of old Shanghai is being flattened, and old residents aren't happy.
Bei Nianzheng and her family live in an incredible mansion, bought by her grandfather in 1911. She has fond memories of growing up here.
BEI NIANZHENG: It was cool during the summer because the house was very big. We like to play and walk on the floor barefoot. My memories of my childhood are so joyful. Some of the woodwork was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but we had it replaced after that.
REPORTER: Oh, I see .
In China today, it would be rare for even senior leaders to live in a home as opulent as this. The house was considered to be of such heritage value, that some years ago it was granted a protection order.
But, as Miss Bei shows me, the rush for development is now so strong, the city has changed its mind.
The family home stands in the middle of a demolition zone. It's part of a proposed green belt that's already well advanced. In fact, the Bei family home is the only thing still standing in what not so long ago was a quiet residential suburb.
BEI: When I heard the house was going to be torn down I felt very distressed and sad. If the government confirms that this house wont be protected anymore, we need a reasonable explanation and solution. That's how we should handle this.
But a visit to Shanghai's urban planning institute. The institute has a visual display of the city government's vision of tomorrow's Shanghai.
Thousands come here hoping to find their own few millimetres of space still intact. This is the green belt where Miss Bei's house is now located. But Miss Bei's house isn't there.
Chief engineer, Huang Jiming, says doubling the amount of greenery per person is a central planning priority. Just five hundred historical buildings in all of Shanghai are scheduled for protection.
HUANG: There were some shabby houses. We moved about 3.6 million citizens out of slums. Together with the development of the city, these old and shabby houses must be demolished.
Shanghai's transformation into an international trade hub is certainly startling. When I first came here in 1993, Pudong, east of the river, was little more than a giant paddy field.
Today, it's full of sprawling foreign managed factories and largely empty skyscrapers. But chief engineer Huang believes these won't take long to fill.
HUANG: To construct an international economic financial trade and shipping centre is the aim of our planning. But during the course of constructing a metropolis we think that the people living and working in this city should have a better environment. Whats more, we will focus more on human beings our city will serve the people.
You don't have to stray too far to see that not everyone supports or prospers from such a rapid evolution.
MADAM CHEN: When the government came to demolish the houses they cut off our water.
Like the Bei family, Madam Chen has found the city planners didn't have room for her home.
CHEN: They cut off my tap water, so we had a well dug. We now drink well water. We cant afford bottled water, at dollars a bottle three bottles a day. Life is so hard.
Already the other 94 families in the area have been moved out. Madam Chen, now widowed, says her family -- all former state workers who are now unemployed -- can't survive without the rent from the four houses they owned in this block.
CHEN: I dont care. No matter how much better Shanghai becomes when I go to buy vegetables I only get some leaves. My life is hard and difficult. I do steal and rob. I have no choice.
For winners in Shanghai's reformation, the choices are expanding. Master Zhu now believes his twilight years are filled with hope and promise.
ZHU: After liberation, I did not have money, but my social status was improved. Workers were able to make money and have a fair life theres no difference between human beings. Nowadays our country is becoming stronger and stronger. The ordinary people feel joy in their hearts.
But my delight at hearing of Master Zhu's new lease of life was to be short lived. The interview was cut short by the police who ordered an immediate halt to the filming.
REPORTER: Is there some problem?
The visit from the police resulted in two hour interrogation. I was ordered to write a self-criticism because I conducted an unauthorised interview without the permission of the city government. The ABC crew was placed under surveillance and we were ordered to leave Shanghai the next morning. So, even in China's most open and free-thinking city, the tentacles of the state are never far away.
Any notion of progress as an engine for openness now felt as empty as the grandiose buildings.
MARY: I think maybe it's a little bit too aggressive, because I know, you know, maybe we have a go in a couple of years, we want to be this or we want to be that; either New York in Asia, or the second Hong Kong or something like that. But I think one thing that is important is the people who live here. Whether they are ready for that or not. I can see of the old people, they miss the old part of Shanghai and they dont want to see that going away.
Shanghai may be able to build enough to impress international investors and create a new group of winners in its march towards economic progress. But for the losers in the game plan, the benefits offered by this government may take some time to filter down through the heavy hand of state control.
For me, the new Shanghai still holds on to too many vestiges of the old communist era. Suspicious of criticism and an unequal power balance between the government and the governed.