The border post of Hunchun faces a cold future as investments sparked by a

Faraway in the north, the signs of the collapse after the boom which followed Deng Xiaoping's southern tour of 1992 boom are visible every-where.

In Hunchun, on the borders with Russia and North Korea, the property bubble in the special economic development zone is over. Half-finished luxury villas stand in empty fields, all work has stopped on a 24-storey four-star hotel which a Hong Kong developer started financing and the brand-new border post with Russia is deserted. Silence reigns at what was once a bustling intersection.

Four years ago, China built a road and a large customs post but the Russians have done next to nothing - on the other side there is no road, just rows of motionless earth-moving machines.

'I guess you can say that the Hunchun fever is over,' confessed Yuan Shoujun, a senior official of the Hunchun Economic Co-operation Zone. It was launched in 1992 when Mr Deng sparked the biggest wave of foreign investment in China's history.

Hunchun, like many other places in China, has been left high and dry. Central government funds have dried up so that the local government cannot even afford to repair the main road to Hunchun after a landslide two years ago. Several state-run factories have had to cease operations for lack of subsidies while foreign investors have suddenly discovered unforeseen liquidity problems.

Hunchun, a small obscure town of 200,000, is in the eastern-most corner of North China on a wedge of land sandwiched between Russia's Primorsky region and North Korea's only special economic zone.