Dongshuimen Bridge crosses the
Yangtze River in downtown Chongqing
A
forest of skyscrapers blocks the mountain
views from both sides of the emerald Yangtze
River that snakes through Chongqing, a
second-tier city of more than 30 million
people in central-western China. From here,
throngs of tourists clamber aboard cruise
ships headed for the ree Gorges Dam, the
world’s largest hydropower project and an undeniably awe-
inspiring feat of humanity harnessing nature.
e dam, more than 600 kilometres away in neighbouring
Hubei province, has done more than put Chongqing on
the bucket lists of domestic sightseers. It also supplies
the landlocked city with unlimited green energ y and
allows oceangoing ships to access its river port. e dam’s
completion, improvements in road and rail connections to
the rest of China and beyond, and government initiatives to
spur growth in western and central China have all led to a
urry of direct foreign investment over the past 20 years.
At one point Chongqing was one of the fastest-growing
cities in the world, with double-digit GDP growth for 15
consecutive years from 2002, peaking at just over 17 per
cent in 2010. In 2018, however, the city missed its 8.5 per
cent growth target by a long shot, clocking up just 6 per
cent, thus relegating it to the realms below the national
average of 6.6 per cent. On a list of the country’s fastest-
growing regions compiled by China’s National Bureau of
Statistics, Chongqing has dropped from rst place in 2016
to 24th last year.
Of course, that still puts Chongqing on a par with
2018’s fastest-growing US state, Texas. But given China’s
breakneck development, can Chongqing still claim to
be a viable investment for foreign companies, especially
compared to rst-tier business havens such as Beijing,
Shanghai and Guangzhou, on China’s a uent east coast?
One of only four Chinese cities under direct control
of the central government, and the only one found away
from the east, Chongqing served as the capital during, and
brie y a er, the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945).
Its geographical remoteness made it the obvious choice
for military bases and weapons manufacturing, but that
in turn rendered its export sector practically nonexistent.
Even when local industries started to diversify into textiles,
food, chemicals and electronics, the focus was very much
on the domestic market.
e government spent RMB4 trillion (US$600 billion)
on xed assets and infrastructure in Chongqing from 2013
to 2015, amounting to 94 per cent of the city’s total GDP.
Chongqing is now the economic centre of the upstream
Yangtze basin, dominating manufacturing and helping to
spur investment in the region. While heavy industry is still
very much present, the landscape has slowly started shi ing
towards high-tech and service industries, with Honeywell,
CISCO, IBM and Hewlett-Packard all setting up in the city.
But while state investment in China’s manufacturing hubs
has propped up their economies for years, it has also made
them susceptible to changes in domestic and global policies. destinations