Each day, 1,370 people arrive in Chongqing, China, most destitute and looking for any kind of work. Some join the bangbang army, composed of the poorest migrants carrying heavy loads on their shoulders suspended from bamboo poles—bang bangs—in local parlance. The porters earn about three dollars a day as they repeatedly climb and descend the city’s steep hills. Others find work as cleaners. Menial jobs are always available.
At first, most new arrivals make just subsistence wages. But they come to this city, once the capital of China, because they are able to earn enough to send a few yuan home to families still in the countryside. And as they better their lot, migrants have fueled the river town’s rise, making it the world’s most populous city at some 33 million souls. There are only 37 countries on the planet that have more people than this metropolis.
Welcome to Chongqing on the upper reaches of the Yangtze, China’s longest waterway. Here, a roaring economy means that no one needs to stay poor for long. Indeed, the city’s officials believe they can avoid the fates of Rio and other cities discussed in this Forbes Megacities project. “There will be no slums in Chongqing, unlike India or Brazil,” says Huang Qifan, a vice mayor of the city. “Rapid economic growth means farmers can quickly find work, so they won’t live in poor conditions.”
Chongqing is on a roll. Once part of Sichuan province, it was carved off in 1997 to become what Beijing calls a provincial-level city, joining Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin in that category. Chongqing is the only such administrative unit in the country’s vast—and undeveloped—west.
To develop its frontier, the Chinese central government in 1999 announced its “Go West” campaign, which some compare to the Marshall Plan. Chongqing, dubbed “Chicago on the Yangtze,” was the big beneficiary of Beijing’s binge spending on infrastructure and just about everything else in its western areas.
The city also became a lab experiment in planning as the central government sought to speed urbanization. Central planners made the city big—it covers an area almost three times the size of Belgium—so that migrants could, within its boundaries, move from rural areas, to satellite cities, to suburbs of the core urban area, and to the metropolis itself without ever crossing municipal boundaries.
So there is urbanization within Chongqing itself, with the urban component now standing at about 46%. The center city is around 10 million, and that is set to double to 20 million by the end of this decade.
Not surprisingly, Chongqing grew fast once central planners separated it from Sichuan. Freed from Sichuan bureaucrats who favored their capital of Chengdu, Chongqing officials went to work employing Beijing’s cash.
Jiangjin, a Yangtze trading post a half hour from Chongqing’s urban core, illustrates how local officials created growth. Jiangjin prospered when it was absorbed into the central part of Chongqing in 2006 as part of a government initiative to integrate outlying areas into the core city through transportation infrastructure. New roads and railroads attracted manufacturing as did government incentives. Industry then provided the jobs for the seemingly never-ending stream of incoming migrants. As a result, Jiangjin these days has been on a tear, growing at a 16.8% clip.
Some say urbanization is the most important trend in China’s history as poor peasants transform themselves into swanky urbanites. There are 166 cities with a population over one million in China at this time, and more are on the way. Chongqing, the fastest-growing city on the planet a half decade ago, thinks it can urbanize for at least another two decades. That sounds overly optimistic, especially because China’s investment-powered growth model looks like it is stalling and because the government in Beijing has started to renationalize the Chinese economy.
So don’t look to top-down initiatives to work for long. Private enterprise has been the engine of China’s miraculous growth during the reform era beginning in 1978, and nothing-to-lose migrants are the hope of tomorrow’s growth in Chongqing—as well as of China itself. Chongqing can avoid creating enormous slums, like Rio’s 600 favelas, if it can wean itself off government money and instead look to all the ambitious peasants who want to go into business for themselves in the world’s most dynamic city.
外媒笔下的新重庆:入世界经济版图 成城市化实验室
在过去的5年里，重庆坚持走民生导向的发展道路，经历了前所未有的高速城市化、工业化和民生改善过程，成为世界经济版图中一颗耀眼的新星，引起了全球知名媒体的高度关注。从今日起，日报将遴选一系列世界知名媒体对重庆的报道，从一个新的角度认识我们生活的这座城市。
重庆：中国城市化的实验室
每一天大约有1370人来到中国重庆。他们大都贫穷，愿意做任何工作。有些加入了“棒棒军”，肩挑竹竿（本地方言又叫“棒棒”）从事货物运送。在日复一日的爬坡上坎中，这些挑夫每天大约可以赚取3美元。还有些当上了清洁工。诸如此类的杂务性工作并不难找到。
起初，大多数新来的人收入只能保障最基本生活。但他们向往这座曾作为中国陪都的城市，其原因是有机会赚取更多，并争取攒下一笔钱汇回农村的老家。在改变自己命运的同时，他们也推动了这座江滨城市的新兴，使之成为拥有3300万人口的世界最大城市。地球上仅有37个国家的人口超过这座超级都市。
欢迎来到重庆，中国最长水道——扬子江的起点。这里，迅猛的经济发展意味着没人会一直穷下去。实际上，市政府官员有信心避免里约热内卢等“福布斯大都市项目”中其他城市遭遇的命运。“这边不会出现印度或者巴西那样的贫民窟”，黄奇帆市长如此说道，“飞速增长的经济可以使农民工很快找到工作，所以他们能够脱离贫困。”
重庆的发展势如破竹。曾经作为四川省一部分的她，于1997年被分离出来，加入北京、上海、天津的行列，成为中央直辖市，拥有省级权限。重庆是在这个国家广大的西部欠发达地区中唯一如此的行政单位。
为了发展边缘地带，中国中央政府于1999年启动了“西部大开发”战略。有人将其比之为“马歇尔计划”。
政府在西部地区进行了超大规模的基础设施建设及其他投资。被誉为“扬子江上芝加哥”的重庆从中获益匪浅。
这座城市也是中央政府为加速城市化进程而批准设立的重要试验区。中央将其规划为超大城市——其面积大约为比利时的三倍——以至于住在边缘地区的居民不必跨省便可以从乡村转移到卫星城，或者中心城区的郊外，或者都市中心。
所以重庆市内部也在进行着城市化进程，其城镇人口目前已达到46%。中心城市的人口已经有大约1000万，并计划在2020年底翻番达到2000万。
不足为奇的是，被中央的规划者们从四川省分离出来后，重庆才步入快速增长的轨道。重庆官员现在可以运用中央直接的财政支持开展工作。
江津，距重庆主城大约半小时车程，扬子江上重要的贸易港口，展示了本地官员是如何创造经济增长的。近来重庆市政府已着手通过大规模交通设施建设将近郊地区与城市核心相整合。江津也于2006年被吸纳成为重庆市中心地带的一部分。新修的公路与铁路正如政府所设想的那般吸引了大量的制造业入驻。产业的兴起为不断前来的新移民提供了工作机会。结果是，现在的江津可谓是乐不可支，其经济增速达到了16.8%。
有人说城市化是中国历史中最重要的趋势，贫穷的乡下人可以借此转变为时髦的城里人。目前中国已有166座城市拥有100万以上的人口，更多的城市正在加入这个行列之中。重庆作为过去五年中地球上发展最快的城市，还准备将这种城市化进程持续20年。
现在的移民将是重庆、同样也是中国未来增长的希望。重庆可以避免出现如同里约热内卢那样的600多个贫民窟，如果她可以不必依靠政府财力，而是有赖于所有的这些踌躇满志，愿意在这座世界最具活力的城市中自力更生、艰苦创业的新移民。