Shanghai is swelling. News reports today say that the population of China’s biggest city has now topped 20 million. More than three million residents have been added to the city register in the last year alone. It’s not a baby boom. It’s a job search on a giant scale. In a country that boasts a growth rate of eight percent annually, Shanghai’s tops that.
And what’s happening there is happening in cities across China, as rural dwellers leave their farms to search for factory work. The migrants are just one chapter in a story about China’s century-long rise from isolation to economic force. And as the U.S. worries about its war on terrorism in the Middle East, China is wielding new influence, and economic might.
Guests:
Merle Goldman, professor emerta of history, Boston University, and scholar, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard
Bonnie Glaser, senior associate, Center for Strategic Studies, and consultant to the State and Defense Departments
Matthew Forney, Time magazine’s Beijing Bureau Chief