China: The World’s Largest City

Perched on a bluff above the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, the old city of Chongqing appears to some visitors to resemble the superstructure of a large ship. Situated more than 800 miles from the sea and more than 900 miles from the power center of Peking, Chongqing could easily have come to resemble a rusted hulk aground in an urban backwater, despite its brief fame as Chungking, China’s capital city during the war with Japan. Forty years later, however, few other cities in China are undergoing such momentous change and rapid growth.

Virtually overnight, Chongqing has become the largest city not only in China but in the world. Territory to the north and west has been annexed, so that the population now encompasses 13.89 million people.[*] Some residents live in newly built apartment blocks, others in air-raid shelters dating back to the war. All seem to be in constant, industrious motion. Chongqing, as a result, is a swirling cauldron of noise and smoke as buzzing motorbikes and overloaded buses strain to climb its steep hills.

Chongqing embraces 90 districts and twelve counties. In 1983 it was given the economic and administrative powers of a province, although it remains part of Sichuan. For the past two years the city has become an economic laboratory for the country. Chongqing has plants that produce trucks, buses, machine tools, chemicals, textiles and munitions. It has ample supplies of high-grade coal, natural gas and iron ore, as well as rich red earth, which provides an abundance of vegetables and grain. Thus it is an ideal testing ground for the plans of Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping, a Sichuan native son, who wants to streamline China’s bureaucracy, increase economic incentives and put a new face on Chinese socialism.

With Peking’s blessing, Chongqing’s city government has taken over the administrative functions once managed by 22 separate government ministries and Sichuan province. It has also been empowered to negotiate contracts worth up to $5 million directly with foreign companies without consulting Peking. Last year alone, the city signed deals worth about $100 million with 70 foreign firms.

If an idea works in Chongqing, so the new reasoning goes, it should work elsewhere in China. The notion that factories should be allowed to funnel some of their profits back into expansion, for instance, was first tried in Chongqing. So was another innovation: decreasing the decision-making power of political cadres in plants and increasing the power of local managers. Observes Long Zeyuan, deputy director of the city’s economic-system reform commission: “In the old days, all the decisions were made on a political level by people who didn’t think about profit or prices or market conditions.”

Now Long and other planners report to Mayor Xiao Yang, 55, a wiry engineer and former vice mayor of Peking who has gained a national reputation as a “city doctor.” Says Xiao: “I hope to play that role here. Our population may be large, but unfortunately our economy is not. To make our economy compatible with size is the most serious problem we face.” Hopes for improvement focus on developing what Xiao describes as “a comparatively high level of management.” Chongqing plants, he believes, should be able to increase exports and thereby provide hard currency to finance such projects as improved power and water-purification systems. That should in turn attract foreign investment.

Chongqing’s factories are being allowed to turn out consumer products along with staples ordered by the government. The 98-year-old Jianshe Machine Tool Works, for example, produces Yamaha motorcycles as well as rifles. The reforms are stimulating competition. Jianshe’s Yamahas are up against Hondas assembled in another Chongqing plant. Says Jianshe Plant Manager Chen Zisheng: “The competition is good. It makes us compete on quality, and that is important now.”

Freed from the inefficiencies of political supervision, managers are allowed to distribute more bonuses to their workers, although some excesses in the practice have been criticized recently by Peking. With fewer agencies of the national government to report to, the city government has been able to coordinate and streamline industrial operations. Chongqing Iron and Steel Plant No. 3, for instance, manufactures rolled sheet steel for the Post and Telecommunications Equipment Factory, three miles away. Under the old system, the material had to be shipped to a central government warehouse 150 miles away in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, and was then transported back to Chongqing. Ending such practices has helped increase industrial output and raise revenues by 25%.

Xiao has plenty of problems to tend to in Chongqing . For one thing, the city is woefully short of transportation. Says Chen Zhihui, the municipal planning commission’s vice president: “There are not enough trucks, cars, trains or taxis. We have to plan to import more.” Hotel space is insufficient, and air service is inadequate. Chongqing’s airport lies in a valley that is fogbound so frequently in winter that one of every three flights must be canceled.

Still, the Chongqing experiment appears to be working. Prosperity is evident both in the factories and the city at large. Indeed, some ordinary residents have become quite wealthy. Kang Gomin, 36, operates two outdoor noodle shops at a market north of the Jialing River, where 1,300 farmers sell their produce. Says Kang: “I got the idea to open a restaurant when I realized that the people who bring their goods here cannot go back to their houses to eat their meals.” When his first shop began to prosper, he opened a second.

Judging from the merchandise available in Chongqing’s department stores and the thousands of bazaars and shops, city residents have become avid consumers. Color televisions are on sale for $680, along with locally manufactured refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, even keyboard organs. With prosperity has come more time for leisure. In one factory auditorium, an eight-piece orchestra plays nightly, and couples tentatively attempt fox-trots, rumbas, two-steps, even the twist. Says one disbelieving onlooker: “You could not imagine such a thing as this only a couple of years ago. These people were in cell meetings.” –By Spencer Davidson. Reported by Edwin M. Reingold/Chongqing