Shanghai bulldozer

So while the rest of the worlds mega-cities struggle to deal with immigration and the preservation of old ways and old buildings in the face of development , Shanghai throws all caution to the wind.

Don't be mistaken, Shanghai is not Communist in any way shape or form. However, the government does have a strong role in the central planning of big projects , kinda like Muldoon (for non-kiwis he was a funny guy and PM, called a snap election drunk once) i.e there is no Resource Management Act. The government wants to build something it builds it and no one gets in the way. Obviously there are winners and losers in all this. Ironically the winners are probably what would have been called bourgeoise in the past.

Also unlike many other cities Shanghai actually has a foriegn residents target! Mind you it's only 5% and given the abundance of cheap local labour the unions (joke) don't have to worry about those "forigners stealing our jobs". However I get the feeling that outa-towners are treated like forigners, generally fill the low paid jobs and are never quite given the same level of respect or opportunites. Shanghai (like most places in China) even has it's own dialect that others can't really understand. I mean it's important to know where ones from!!

Well all this political cynism has got me hankering for some nice, uplifting, morally- simple, socialist realism (today's pic).