it's party time in the birthplace of chinese communism
welcome to 21st century shanghai
with its science fiction skyline and hyper-scaled building boom
it's an imposing symbol of china's phenomenal growth
"it's glorious to be rich"
is the party's new directive.
a new middle class is creating a surge of wealth
a surge that is leaving millions behind
author: edboy&nissalor @ 18-303
in an abandoned theme park on the edge of town
film director ma liang is selling dreams to the new china.
and in the heart of the city designer jenny ji prepares to conquer the fashion world
on the other side of the town architect jin zhiguang
@@
but the shanghai dream comes at a price
wei qin has lost her home,her job
and maybe even her son's future
nearly two million residents have been forced from their neighbourhoods
jiang meili's husband tried to fight the system
now he's in jail she's harassed by police and destitute.
hu yang captures a city of vaunting ambitions
and wrenching despair
a world he fears could self-destruct.
these are some of the lives caught up in one of the most stunning human transformations in the world today
and nowhere is that transformation more apparent than in shanghai.
[whistle blowing]
in the streets and neighbourhoods of the old city
the new dream for china is being turned into reality.
a generation of chinese
now live in a style that would not look out of place in new york, berlin or toronto.
a quarter century ago
the chinese government concluded that their survival depended on creating something
they once tried to crush
a prosperous middle class.
in 1921, the communist party was born here.
today, that once hallowed birthplace lies hidden behind a starbucks
and an upscale shopping plaza.
state controlled television is pumping out consumer dreams
for the more than one-hundred million members of china's new middle class.
these ads have propelled director ma liang
into the top ranks of shanghai's booming advertising industry.
these are exciting times for the 33-year-old director.
he is part of the first generation in 50 years whose lives are not controlled by the communist party.
ma liang owns a downtown condo,
runs a successful business and travels anywhere he wants.
it's an astonishing transformation from his impoverished youth
when he and his family all lived together in two rooms.
ma liang:
in those days, we all wore poor clothing
very simple clothing.
there was no complexity in our lives, everything was just ordinary.
back then, when i was a teenager,
i could never imagine what i'd be like when i hit 30.
the way the country was going i couldn't see that there was any future for me.
now i'm always dreaming.
dreaming about what i'll do next.
dreaming about what i might do tomorrow.
and now look at me.
ma liang makes good money directing commercials for something that didn't exist even a decade ago:
China's yuppie generation.
across t country women are determined to be part of the hip, new urban lifestyle.
nearly half of all post-graduate degrees are earned by women,
and women now make up 20 per cent of the country's entrepreneurs.
jenny ji started out studying economics.
today, she is one of shanghai's hot young clothing designers.
she's the only female-designer in the city to be invited to shanghai's upcoming international fashion show.
jenny ji:
i'm a designer from the new generation, and i feel great.
i don't have the old restrictions and boring attitudes.
even though there are lots of problems to solve,
i feel positive about what's happening to me.
the old pessimism has gone and i can embrace the new changes.
i'm always dreaming of the choices available to me.
the communist party likes to call the creation of its new middle class
"socialism with chinese characteristics".
everyone else calls it capitalism.
but this is capitalism with a centrally planned roadmap.
[over loudspeaker] dear visitors,
what you see in front of you is the planning model for shanghai central city
covering an area of 100 square kilometres.
shanghai's master plan for the future has its own building
complete with a detailed scale model.
it depicts a city with 4,000 new steel and glass skyscrapers,
and a network of roads and highways that has doubled in just ten years.
this massive construction boom is bursting out of the city.
the countryside is being
paved over with suburbs that now stretch to the horizon.
suburbs like forest manor,
one of the pricier estate developments, 40 minutes from the centre of the city.
in housing deprived shanghai,
gated communities are the status symbols of the newly rich.
family farms are being replaced with tree lined streets,
manicured lawns, and monster homes that would not look out of place in any upscale suburb in the west.
even though only a wealthy few can ever afford to live here,
forest manor helps feed the dream that in the new China anything is possible.
shanghai's redevelopment is being called the largest construction project in the world.
the jobs and the wealth it generates attract nearly a million people a year
swelling shanghai's population to over 20 million.
jin zhiguang caught the segment??, and brought his family back from america
he's building four 28-storeyed @ buildings, a progect far big than anything is done in the u.s
but it's about more than his personal success
jin zhiguang has come home to be part of the new China
in the past our culture only reflect to China's ruling class,
but now it's going to be about the majority of people
and that majority is going to be our new middle class
this is only the beginning
this new classes will be well educated and well have the dreams and ambition,
that is going to move China in a wonderful new direction
but there's a price to be paid for these towers of progress.
half of shanghai's old neighbourhoods have disappeared.
for the city's poorer residents, shanghai is a city of despair.
over the past 10 years
more than 600,000 families have been forced to move as their neighbourhoods are destroyed.
the chinese government expropriated all land after the 1949 revolution
and is now making a fortune leasing it to developers.
thousands refuse to move saying they haven't been fairly compensated.
fighting eviction means living holed-up in a demolition site
often without electricity
or running water.
all across the old downtown, small ground wars are being fought.
even though they could be harassed by the police,
these protestors are preparing to hoist a banner that will be their battle flag.
residents accuse developers of paying them a fraction of what their property is worth
then trying to sell them expensive apartments in distant suburbs.
when the demolition crews arrive there is little anyone can do.
[shouting]
resistance is seldom successful.
workers, some armed with sledge hammers, await orders to begin.
wei qin: there was no other choice.
they had so many workers surrounding me.
if i had stayed in my house how could i fight with them and hope to win?
the only thing to do was leave.
when wei qin's little flat was destroyed,
she lost the only thing of value she'd ever owned.
she'd already lost her job at a state owned factory when it downsized.
now she barely survives on a small pension, still wears her old work clothes,
and scrapes around for bargains.
it's been a hard life.
she lives with her son in a single room with only one bed.
the apartment she once owned was the key to her son's future.
yongkang's grades are poor and wei qin knows that without a tutor he will continue to fall behind.
wei qin: if the developer had offered me more money, my son would be better off.
first of all, i would have some money to pay his tutorial fees and settle my housing situation.
and because of her son and her fears for him,
wei qin will take a giant step.
she will join the growing protest against city hall;
but in China this can be dangerous.
millions of chinese feel they have been betrayed by the government.
they'd been raised on the promise of security and jobs for life.
but in just one, four-year period, factory shutdowns left 24 million workers unemployed.
shanghai, China's industrial giant, has been hit hard.
hu yang, a former factory worker himself, knows what it is like to be unemployed in a city brimming with prosperity.
he's a struggling photographer
who has published a book portraying the widening gap between the old shanghai
and the pampered new middle class.
he's photographed nearly 500 people living in shanghai.
like zhu min who once worked for a large state owned clothing factory.
[laughing]
he owns a small tailor shop that just makes enough to support his family.
and in an upscale suburb
hu yang documents the lifestyle of one of China's new entrepreneurs.
hu yang:
the gap between rich and poor is huge, huge.
right now shanghai society looks
we have the rich and the poor
like large weights with a narrow band of middle class like the bar in between them.
this is creating a lot of problems.
it puts the distribution of wealth
and even the stability of our society at risk.
wei qin is taking the bus to visit her mother.
buses keep arriving, but she won't take the expensive ones.
it's just another reminder that she's stuck at the bottom,
with the millions of unemployed who have little to offer China's new economy.
wei qin: when i worked at the factory,
i was never given any training.
they were not interested in teaching us anything.
so now i have no useful skills.
this means i'm not able to find a job, so i'll have to star all over.
wei qin's mother is a pensioner
living in a small apartment a half hour away.
then there is that part of the visit wei qin dreads.
wei qin: i have this helpless feeling,
but i don't have much choice.
my mom can save a little here and there
but her pension is very small, so it's not easy for her to save much.
you don't have to be poor
to be caught in the whirlwind of change in China.
even winners find themselves bewildered by the speed of transformation.
ma liang directs commercials to pay the rent,
but his real love is photography, and he's trying to capture the unease he sees around him.
ma liang: the series of photos i'm taking is called my circus.
i'm not just going out and taking pictures;
i'm trying to create something more artistic.
i want to use dramatic techniques to try and tell a story.
it's really more like drama.
each picture of mine is a kind of tragedy about how fate seems to control so much of what is going on.
it's really about how unpredictable life has become today.
i'm using a kind of black comedy to dramatize these feelings.
it's confusing just like life:
unpredictable and full of hints but no answers.
many of China's young artists are experimenting with themes found in peking opera,
art that was once banned by the communist government.
one of those artists is designer jenny ji,
who's preparing for the shanghai international fashion show.
she's exploring designs that go back more than two centuries.
jenny ji: this year we are using the peking opera,
those uniquely painted faces.
i'm adapting those patterns.
i want to capture the expressions and emotion of peking opera using colours,
patterns, bead work, and different combinations of material.
with two boutiques in shanghai and a growing international reputation,
jenny's work is her life.
jenny ji: i'm content with the way my life is going.
i'm not worrying about when to get married or when to have children.
and my family is not pressuring me either.
so many are postponing marriage
that the government is now worried abouethe sudden decline in the birth rate
among e new middle class.
but right now, the only thing on her mindis the big shanghai fashion show.
it's only two days away.
like jenny ji, ma liang has also put off having a family.
he enjoys sunday dinners with his parents, 90-year-old grandmother
his sister and young nephew.
but ma liang admits that finding time for family is getting harder.
ma liang: fewer and fewer people will be able to live close to their families.
today, there's more opportunity for young people.
for example, i've got nine employees working in my studio,
with the exception of one or two who were born in shanghai,
all the rest come from other provinces.
they want to pursue their dream,
so they've had to leave home and now can only visit their families at the most maybe once or twice a year.
[laughing]
ma liang's father was once shanghai's leading opera director.
he and his wife were banished to the countryside by the communists at the height of the cultural revolution.
[laughing]
ma liang was conceived on a farming collective where his parents were forced to work.
[laughing]
they laugh about it now
but his parents say it was their family that helped them survive the trauma of the cultural revolution.
[laughing]
today, the chinese tradition of families living close together is gradually disappearing.
ma liang's marriage is worlds apart from his parents'.
when he talks to his wife it's through the internet.
ni hua is in france studying fashion design.
and while they eventually plan to have a family,
right now they're just enjoying life.
ma liang: we've just started to save some money.
we are young and healthy and can do interesting things,
like travelling, buying a car, decorating our home.
there are lots of fun things to do.
i told my wife that because we're young and have the money there are other things to do,
more things we should do,
like improve our education and develop our careers.
the new economy is also changing jenny ji's family.
at the traditional qing ming festival, jenny, her mother and cousin are paying respects to her grandparents.
she remembers their disappointment when the young generation began moving away.
jenny ji: my grandparents wanted our family to stay together.
traditionally, the more people in a family the more prosperous you become.
nowadays we have different ideas about this.
but even though i'm not living with my parents,
i still feel very close to them.
the relationship is just the same as it always was.
but jenny believes that these cultural traditions help keep her family together.
jenny ji: qing ming is a good festival.
it allows the family to gather together and remember those who have passed away.
even though we are the younger generation
we want to preserve this tradition
at the recording session jenny is checking the sound track for her fashion show.
she moves easily between the traditions passed on from her grandparents and the exhilaration of the new China.
she has the money, the education and the talent to be comfortable in both worlds.
education, and the money to pay for it,
that's what it takes to compete in the new China.
and that's what worries hu yang
when he thinks about his daughter.
he and his family live in workers' apartments built when mao zedong was leader.
a slogan in his honour is slowly fading above the door.
he and his wife li lili and their daughter hu yizhe rent one room and share a kitchen with two other families.
it's how millions still live in China.
the cheap rent allows them to pay for something their generation was denied during the cultural revolution:
a good education.
hu yang: we are typical of many chinese families.
parents invest a lot of time and money on their child's education.
they all expect a lot from their children.
we expect them to be the very best in everything they do.
but a first class education is expensive.
private schools are very costly,
and now, even the better public schools are charging big premiums.
hu yang: right now our country has changed the rules governing high schools.
this has lead to the commercialisation of the education system.
i don't agree with this policy!
we can privatise any other industry but not education.
education should be completely funded by the state.
a commercialised education policy is going to have a lot of bad side effects for the country.
i worry about her a lot.
she is only in grade nine but already she is under a tremendous strain.
her test results show that she has the ability to get into an elite school later on.
even now the teachers are pushing her to get perfect marks.
that's the expectation!
and that's what is putting such an overwhelming pressure on her.
hu yizhe is anxious to get going.
it's saturday, but she is not off to meet her friends.
she's going down the hall to study for the rest of the day.
one of wei qin's favourite pastimes is window-shopping with he son yongkang.
she likes to show him the promise of the new China.
but she worries that he'll never be a part of it.
wei qin: when i see all this i feel some bitterness.
it makes me unhappy.
the main reason for this is cause i don't think society treats people like me fairly.
a few times a year, when, she can afford it,
she likes to buy yongkang his favourite treat...
a mcdonald's hamburger.
but she buys only one that they share.
it wasn't supposed to be this way.
in the old economy she was a proud homeowner and a believer in the party.
then the developers, backed by the government,
offered her a fraction of what her apartment was worth.
it was then wei qin decided to join the rising tide of protest, and sue the government.
wei qin: i knew the odds were stacked against me.
in 100 trials there might be three or four successful cases.
if there were even 10 positive verdicts it would be a huge victory.
i knew i would lose.
undeterred she looked for a lawyer to represent her.
wei qin: to sue, you need a lawyer.
but they'll tell you no matter how much money you offer, they won't take the case.
like so many of shanghai's protestors,
wei qin was left to petition the courts on her own.
these women know first hand why so many lawyers refuse to get involved in property disputes.
jiang meili and mo zhuojie don't look the part but they are considered to be subversives.
their phones are tapped, and the are routine harassed by police.
they've been warned not to speak to the foreign media.
so they come to shanghai's famous waterfront,
crowded with tourists and performers.
here, the two women can blend in and cautiously rendezvous with foreigners.
when they see the police they've learned how to quietly disappear.
but they're determined not to be silenced.
jiang meili's husband was the only lawyer who agreed to help her friend mo zhuojie and more than 2,000 other evicted residents.
jiang meili: they were trapped so they asked my husband to take up their case.
after reading the documents, my husband found many suspicious transactions.
a lot of things were being done under the table.
he told her this was going to be very dangerous for him to take on this case.
as events unfolded, he was right to be afraid.
lawyer zheng enchong's investigations uncovered massive corruption
involving the shanghai city government
and a powerful land developer
with close connections to the communist party.
when details hit the hong kong media,
shanghai officials reacted and made an arrest.
incredibly, it was zheng enchong, who was imprisoned, not the developer.
in a secret trial lawyer zheng was found guilty of revealing state secrets and sentenced to three years in jail.
the developer was eventually convicted with evidence uncovered by zheng enchong and other investigators.
but the government continues to keep jiang meili's husband in prison.
jiang meili: in China, the lawyer who tells the truth will be in trouble.
what we have here proves it.
they can accuse you of treason and you can't tell them that they are wrong or that the conviction should be overturned.
mo zhuojie also paid a price for fighting back.
[muffled talking]
the developer sent construction workers to break into her home and haul out her belongings.
but her daughter had planted a video camera that recorded the police illegally participating in the eviction.
their home had been in the family for three generations.
they were determined to fight back.
her daughter, shen ting,took their story to the hong kong media.
the government was furious.
she was banned from returning to mainland China.
mo zhuojie hasn't seen her daughter in over two years.
muo zhuojie: the shanghai government likes to tell the foreign press that the city is governed by fair and reasonable laws.
so why are they afraid of us?
they are afraid that we will tell the truth!
what we said today is the truth;
we didn't make it up.
how our two families suffered because of this is also true.
we're just two families out of hundreds of thousands of families who have gone through similar experiences.
they can't win in a fight against the government.
in the country side just like the cities, there@@
a few lawyers want to reduce confrontations with the government
by working with the@@system to improve the law
lawyer like professer zhu jiaming
he's brought student to rongbing county
a tree-hour drive northwest of shanghai
to set up an internet line with the university
the professer was raised here
he use his personal connections to talk @@, and let him in try at his lega help line
this is really a kind of remote legal clinic
that lots of most experience students previde wise to people
party @@ are content to let the professor give general lectures on bussiness law
but w@@ to press for the legal rights
professor zhu and his students know they must be carefull
in gaozhuang village, students hand out information about legal aid programes
they had wander to speak privately with the villagers, but the nervouse @@ called them there wasn't enough time
jiang mieli: they not only sent my husband to jail,
they just barge into our house.
you should know we have nothing now. we are poor, so poor.
to be a lawyer for so many years and to be living like this.
he didn't care about making a lot of money,
he just wanted to help ordinary people.
wei qin knows the risks of fighting back,
but she's prepared to take her case all the way to beijing.
wei qin: i don't know.
what does the government do?
what is their function?
i don't know.
why is society turning out like this?
i don't know.
everyone hopes to live in a prosperous country.
but i seem to be on a road that only leads to more poverty.
[phone ringing]
in a neighbourhood close to wei qin,
the contrast between China's winners and losers couldn't be more obvious.
the new economy has brought prosperity for jenny ji and her friends.
unlike wei qin, there is no talk here of challenging the powers that be.
if anything, there is a kind of political apathy.
jenny ji: it may sound strange,
but when my friends and i get together,
we never talk about politics.
there are a lot of things going on that i don't know about.
maybe it's because i studied in europe,
but my feeling is that China is a totalitarian country and getting involved is not going to change a thing.
so i just live my own life.
eventually things will change.
but will the millions of others yet to benefit from the changes sweeping
China be so patient?
in the shimmering city of shanghai,
the new middle class is the first generation in a half century
to be brought up to the new capitalist beat.

the frantic "shop 'til you drop" attitude has created a new mantra:
"you are what you have".
there is an obsession for anything foreign:
dance steps, clothing styles, and cool attitudes.
China's mtv-generation wants to be part of the world beat.
some worry that this western invasion will bury chinese culture.
but the resilience of a 5000-year-old civilization cannot be underestimated.
already some of the next generation of artists,
writers and musicians
are experimenting with blends of western influence and old traditions;
everywhere there are signs of a new generation
with a powerful need to discover its roots.
ma liang: now we are beginning to look for our culture.
not just rediscovering it, but using it.
we always knew it would be interesting,
but when we dug into
it we're discovering how wondrous it really is.
the antiques and other things we're collecting are just the surface.
we are trying to understand the deeper meaning of our culture.
at the shanghai international fashion show,
jenny ji's moment has arrived.
China has ambitions to be more than the world's sweatshop.
it wants to produce its own designs, its own unique products
and to do this it needs to encourage talent.
jenny ji: i'm really happy with the reaction we got.
after the show we received lots of messages, and e-mails from our friends and customers
who all congratulated us.
also a lot of media have taken an interest in what i will be doing next.
on the whole, i wasn't expecting all that much from this show,
but actually we received a lot of very positive feedback.
now we can all relax!
the next afternoon there's a party to celebrate her success.
[laughing]
jenny recently bought a small townhouse in a suburb of shanghai.
ma liang who helped design the stage production,
has come to celebrate along with other artists, models and musicians;
though assembling jenny's first barbecue is proving to be a bit more of a challenge.
they are the lucky ones.
young, educated, with careers that now make them part of the new middle class.
they believe that because they've made it, in time others will to.
ma liang: i have seen a lot of poverty, and i have strong feelings about what i've seen.
but then what can i do?
China has a large population.
20 years ago, it wasn't just the rural areas;
shanghai was poor; everyone was poor;
but now a lot of people have money
even though many others still don't.
but i think it's only a stage.
the situation is going to get better and better.
they can afford to be optimistic about the future;
they are the future, role models for China's ambitions in the 21st century.
wei qin spends another night making her rounds of the small markets.
she is worlds apart from jenny,
ma liang and their friends.
they can afford to wait for the changes they are sure will come.
wei qin cannot.
until she and millions like her
feel part of the massive transformations taking place around them,
China's dreams for the future remain unsettled.