Next to a stream of stinking grey water clogged with rubbish, a woman in her 50s scavenges among the debris for items she can resell. 'My textile factory closed and I am too old to get another job. I am reduced to this. This is a part of Shanghai they did not show President Clinton last year.' Across the city, on the 13th floor of the stock exchange building he bought for 30 million yuan (HK$28 million), Chen Rong, 41, stares at a computer on his desk listing the shares from which he made a fortune that turned him into one of Shanghai's wealthiest men, owner of a company worth 350 million yuan.
Not far away, Wang Mingguo, 56, sits disconsolately in front of the six pairs of trousers he is selling on a bed frame in a street of houses that are soon to be knocked down. 'I was laid off six years ago. Here I earn just enough to eat. But I have no pension and medical insurance. What will happen to me and my wife when we are old?' These are three faces of the new Shanghai, China's richest city that is shedding its communist character and seems to be returning to what it was before 1949 - a paradise for the rich, the foreigner and the adventurer and a place of fear and hardship for the poor and unskilled.
The wealth gap between poor and rich, one of the most striking features of pre-1949 Shanghai, is growing day by day. 'The gap in China is smaller than in Africa, which ranks top in the world, but is widening,' said one local journalist. 'China ranks on the same level as Malaysia. We are banned from reporting about this in the media, for fear of worsening social tensions.' Nationwide, three per cent of the population hold 38 per cent of the six trillion yuan in individual bank deposits and the imbalance is higher in Shanghai as the country's commercial capital. Individuals in the city hold foreign exchange deposits worth US$6.5 billion (HK$50.3 billion).
The vast reconstruction programme the city has undergone over the past 10 years has exacerbated this gap. One million people have been moved from old, decaying houses in the centre to new apartments in the suburbs and their homes demolished to make way for skyscraper shopping centres, office buildings, hotels and apartment blocks.
The most expensive flats sell for up to four million yuan, only 20 per cent less than the price of a similar apartment in Tokyo and far out of reach of the average city resident, who earns about 1,400 yuan a month.
The buyers of these apartments are private businessmen, companies, Hong Kong and Taiwan people, overseas Chinese, including Shanghai returnees, and foreigners. But so many are empty that the city has been forced to offer residence permits to people from outside Shanghai if they spend a minimum amount to buy one. The sum was cut this year from 500,000 yuan to 300,000 because of the weak market.
