Standing in the right spot in this gigantic city and hills draped with apartment complexes can remind you of Hong Kong, the density of habitation will recall Tokyo and the river-spanning brawn, replete with an immense new structure over the Yangtze that echoes the Brooklyn Bridge, might recall New York.
Everywhere one looks here, there are new expressways, new bridges and towering new housing complexes rising, so many in fact that it is the occasional glimpse of something old, rather than the sight of anything new, that takes one’s breath away.
China has built megacities before, of course. The country’s rich east abounds with them, strung along the coast from Tianjin in the north to Shenzhen in the far south like so many pearls. But the swift rise of Chongqing represents a new departure: a major push by Beijing to spread the fruits of China’s economic boom to the country’s vast interior, home to three Chinese in four.
One after another, the big cities of the interior have eagerly entered the race to urbanize, with many openly brandishing the objective of becoming a “world city” within a few years. But whether judged by its size, its ambition or the scale of transformation, Chongqing, with its 12 million people, remains in a class by itself.
