Streams of foreign visitors have been dazzled by the view of Pudong, usually while clinking glasses on the terraces of the upmarket eateries housed in the colonial-era buildings that line the riverfront strip opposite, known as the Bund. The image this view conveyed–that Shanghai had returned to its entrepreneurial heyday–was far from reality. Unlike southern China and the Yangtze delta region, where Deng’s policies had bred a risk-taking, private economy, Shanghai was developed as a socialist showcase. Few visitors admiring the skyscrapers realized that most of them had been built by city
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