Chongqing

I arrived in Chongqing in the late afternoon of May 12^th, without knowing about the devastating earthquake in Wenchuan, which is about 200 miles northwest of Chongqing. The taxi driver told me that even people in Beijing and Shanghai felt the quake. I knew the situation was pretty severe.

There were many aftershocks. To be cautious, I changed my hotel room from 22^nd floor to the 10^th floor. In the middle of the night, I felt my bed was shaking and people in the hallway were yelling and running. I guess I must have been too tired, I thought I was dreaming and fell back to sleep.

Things started getting back to normal in a couple of days. Chongqing is a city that grows on me. When I first arrived, I thought Chongqing was too crowded, with ugly buildings densely standing next to one another. But after a few days, I started to like it.

Chongqing is also known as a "foggy city." Although there is no blue sky, the air was not full of smog like other cities in China. All the taxis and buses were fueled by natural gas. Chongqing is China's largest production base of natural gas, which can supply Chongqing alone for about 300 years.

Chongqing is also one of the fastest growing cities in China. In a single day new construction can add approximately 137,000 square meters of usable floor space to satisfy demands for residential and commercial space. Everywhere I went, I saw high-rises that go on and on and on…. yet there are more buildings under construction.

Geographically, Chongqing is like Manhattan – a peninsula embraced by two rivers. The night before I left Chongqing, I went to Chao Tian Men, where the Yangtze river is joined by the Jialing river. The lights on both sides of the banks were shining spectacularly. People were dancing in the parks and squares. Women were beautiful, wearing Calvin Klein, Max Mara and other name brands.

Pretty soon, Chongqing will be another Shanghai!

China’s Urban Billion

A recent McKinsey Global Institute report “Preparing for China’s Urban Billion” says that the country’s unprecedented urbanization will continue over the next 20 years, and by 2030 China's urban population will reach 1 billion. Here are some numbers that are indeed mind-bogging:

- By 2025, China will have 221 cities with more than one million inhabitants – compared with 35 in Europe today.

- China’ urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025. Over 350 million people will move from rural areas to the cities – more than the population of the Unite States.

- By 2025, China could have 15 super-cities with average populations of 25 million people. 41 percent of China’s higher income middle class will live in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan, Chongqing, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

- China will build almost 40 billion square meters of floor space over the next 20 years, requiring construction of 50,000 new skyscrapers – the equivalent of ten New York Cities.

- Up to 170 cities could meet planning criteria for mass-transit systems by 2025, more than twice the current number in Europe. This could promise to be the greatest boom in mass-transit construction in history.

The report also says that China’s urban economy will generate 90 percent of its GDP by 2025. Urban China will become a dominant global market with its aggregate consumption almost twice, and disposable income over two times, those of Germany.

Businesses have not only an opportunity to leverage China’s booming middle class and a stratum of affluent consumers, but also to become major investors – in road and rail, public-transits, the energy-supply infrastructure, and energy efficiency technologies.