City on Steroids

Chongqing is a very good example of what the human race can do if it applies itself. So much is getting done, getting built. On the other hand, it also highlights problems such as what to do with the poor, and their living and working conditions. The dirty air is a reminder of how easy it is to ruin the environment. While development of cities is good, we will continuously be challenged with doing this in a way that ensures no person nor the environment would get slighted in the process.

China is rapidly wanting to grow into a more urban and civilized country. However, there are still large amounts of the population that are unskilled or semi-skilled workers, making an insignificant amount of money for labor intensive jobs. As technology advances, so does the world. There is an obvious gap between the rich and the poor that is only becoming more significant. Rich business owners continue to pay their workers at minimum wage due to their lack of knowledge and skills. This will only become an issue in the long run as wealthy individuals in China as well as other parts of their world do not care about people living in poverty but will only care about the profits they make in their business.

Even though China is a rapidly growing economy with a strong product market, but yet it faces a high unemployment rate due to its 13 billion population. It's difficult to generate jobs, which causes the living standards of all Chinese to be different. Urbanization causes the housings to become more expensive and less affordable for majority of the population. Large cities in China, such as Beijing and Shanghai, are places only the wealthiest can afford. What about people on the bottom of the labour force? the construction workers or the factory workers? The inflation rate has gone up so high, to the point where those people started to migrate and sought for a better living standard. Although China is a rapidly developing country, but shouldn't living standards grow as well? China shouldn't have a strong economy, but has half of its population living in poverty.

I agree that the Chinese are working hard to keep their jobs, and to earn enough to provide food for their family for even just a day. But what the Chinese government needs to take into consideration is that when they take peasants’ land for crops to build high-rises for the growing population, people begin to lose their jobs. Even with more places for people to live, would everybody be guaranteed a job that they would be able to work with for over a long period of time?

The cities in China are changing so fast. I left China 3 years ago, if I go back, I believe I won't even recognize my home town. It is moving towards a developed country. However, there are still a lot of people who cannot find jobs. The cities are changing, the economic is growing, but the number of job opportunities stay the same, and the environment is becoming worse. These are the major issues China is currently facing with.

It pains me how there are people who are working really hard and are not rewarded for their efforts. It's true that the city is prosperous beacuse of them, but at least they should be treated a lot better. At this rate, the problem of poverty will never be solved.

China is moving beyond a point of sustainable growth, they are simply moving too fast. The issue of scarce resources is merely one out of many problems they face either currently, or will face in the future. With such a rapid growth, there will be a clear scarcity of land combined with the massive population.

The rapid growth of China is taking a heavy toll on the environment.
At the World expo in Shanghai they had such strong focus on sustainability they need to enforce these concepts.
China also needs desperately to take care of their people. The living conditions of the workers are deplorable, how do they expect them to build the city up with such horrible living condition.

Is it worth it for China to develop in such a fast pace and totally give up its environment? A part of this video shows how horrible the air pollution is in the city. It does look very bad. Adam (the reporter) said that he would not want to live at a place like that breathing in that kind of air everyday. The definition of "standard of living" can be indicated by education, household income, household ownership of durable goods, literarcy rate, or the number of doctors the country has. Well, China is definately trying to achieve a higher standard of living where it first went after its economy. The Chinese economy, as everybody is aware of, has been improving or in fact leading in the world. The United States is in debt to the Chinese. China is on its way to reach the highest standard of living. In the future once they get there, think about how bad the country is going to look like. Think about how bad the country is going to smell like. With all that pollution being accumulated over these years can be pretty scary. Looking at its environment, would you say that the Chinese have the highest standard of living with its leading economy? They are living in a "dump yard". The Chinese government must find a way to eliminate the pollution problem if it is possible to be done with out changing the pace of the development of its economy. Otherwise, the Chinese government must go into to deep discussions about how its people are going to living in the future.

Adam, you think that the best representation of American life is the show, Married with Children?>>?!! YIKES! that is a sad sad statement.

ok, but on to the important thing, WONDERFUL and very imformative pod.. i find myself amazed at how much you cram into a 28 min piece. great ending shot too!
Please continue the hard work you do. I am thankful for you and your team for creating such intelligent and thoughtful work.

best to you!

awesome job!

one funny thing--- adam won't eat pig ear in this episode, but i believe in a previous episode he ate numerous animal penises! LOLZ

What a neat show it is. Thanks Adam!

These people are going to have the biggest financial crash the world has ever seen. There is no way to sustain the growth and keep the peace between the rich and poor. They are stacked on top of each other and sooner or later somthing will give.

Another "City on Steroids" would be Dubai too. I really do not like how the workers are not being cared for. They are just being "used". I really hope in nations like China will take the time to understand the importance of human dignity.

Great Job Adam. I really like the writing style, the shooting and the characters you found for your story. I've been to China a few times, but haven't hit up Chongqing yet. Tks for giving us a glimpse of what this mega city is like and the issues these people are faced with.

this has really opened my eyes to something that i, like a lot of people i know, assumed was a poke at the US to "be better". Yes, the Chinese are developing a lot of things that are ahead of what we have in the US...but at what cost? Thank you for showing us...

This is really something. Chongqing is developing way faster than any other city in the world. The Yangtze Dolphins are pretty much gone due to this sprawl. And the farmers...for get it...they are pretty much gone since this city will expand more in the next 5 to 10 years. They had to build a dam on the Yangtze river to hold most of the river back and to supply the area with electricity. There is alot that adam missed which is sorta small but it would of explained alot better...

1.) Dam at the Yangtze river.
2.) Ecology (explained about the dolphins being extinct)
3.) The problems that the city has went through enviromentally more than just the pollution.

After watching this...it made me realize alot of things in my area.

NYC is buliding alot in manhattan and brooklyn...that can't even compare to what china's doing. The Suburban Sprawl is getting hit hard in NJ right now...Its hard to even rent and own a home in NJ because of the taxes...Philadelphia is slowly expanding and now most New Yorkers are telling everyone to Move out to PA or Southern NJ/Phila to live. B/c of cheaper rent and the expand of public transportation. So this pod has made me see some bits and pieces of the future for the US (In the Northeastern Corridor of the country anyway.).

The only mega cities in the United States in the next years will be NYC and maybe Philadelphia...Those cities are close toghether like Tokyo & Yokohama. And the public transportation in NJ is Expanding to meet the demand for travel in between those 2 cities. Plus at the rate that they are building (a taller tower in Center City Philadelphia & New towers in Manhattan and a major redecorating project in downtown Brooklyn & buliding more in the Bronx & Queens.). Its getting close to where the culture is changing when you can work in one city and live in another.

[That's from what i got...at 4am...after watching this for the 1st time.]

if not already, China is going to be a superpower.

I just couldn't live there. Something so vast... I can't even imagine it. Especially considering the fact that its far from the only one of it's kind.

Ben K.

wow, that's intense.

Awesome report. Thanks for showing us what China's development looks like from the inside!

WOW! I spent two weeks in China and was blows away by some of the cities, and never even heard of this one! Great story

One of my favorite china reports thus far, on any network!! really fun and engaging.

Amazing development in Chongqing, and extremely well told. Koppel recently did something on this place as well, but i love how you really immersed yourself into this world in a way that few traditional reporters do. bravo!

Very, very well done, folks.
I was especially drawn to Part Two where a marketplace man was talking about how supply and demand have been thrown out of balance as more country people come to the city. Pigs and other localized farm related products have been greatly affected by this mass migration and, as a result, prices are steadily increasing. This is something to keep track of in China to see how it changes other world economies imbedded in the import/export game.
In Part Three, a truly beautiful wall mural was shown.
I would like to know more about the artist who created it.
Thanks.

very interesting

The late Peter Jennings once did a series of videos called 20th Century: America's Time. In the videos, the rise of America was shown throughout the entire century. I think this pod shows that one day someone will be watching 21st Century: China's Time. It is theirs for the taking.

This is a great thing to watch for so many reasons. Adam covers so many aspects with in the city and life of people with in it. One thing that seemed to pop out is how hard most of the citizens work around the entire city. Not only that but they work for so little and still don't complain as much as most americans. If only this was seen by every here. The man with only an eye reading chart and a bed big enough to sleep on seemed so much happier then most people in america. He simply worked and provided for his family. On the other with peopel so eager to work over there is not completly good. The biggest reason is workers rights and pay. The video showed a developing middle class, but with no chance of unions being formed then the middle class will remain relatively small compared to the numbers of workers and middle class. Some positives and negatives I noticed.

The first thing I noticed when I began watching this pod was the amount of pollution in the Chongqing skyline. It is a pity that the environment has deteriorated so... I hope that nothing like that ever happens here in Australia.

This is a great pod - top stuff Adam. I've been to China 3 times in the past year and am about to go study in Beijing for two years. The true economic miracle is happening in the interior cities like Chongqing - it's totally amazing. The problem however is that the Chinese government is banking on the notion that they will be able to clean up the environment after they industrialise. After seeing cities like Chongqing, I worry that's not going to be quite so easy - there might just be a point of no return. At the moment it's only a matter of losing the freshwater dolphins from the Yangtze but what happens if there's not enough drinkable water to service these sprawling new metropolises?

Frank81 do not write such a thing on other people it's good that they is growing finally they get to have something good, they should not go down for they have just started to develop well.

It seems China's Communist state has given the upper hand here! They can order mass development of cities faster than America. They can populate it faster than us. But they are huge downsides such as the gap between the rich and peasants, the peasants who have to work for $25 a month, and the big environmental problem.
I think they can solve the environmental problem by making laws that prohibits wasteful and toxic products.
China is a superpower.

Amazing insight to the rapid change in China, the growing of mega cities always have negatives and positives

I agree with frank81, china's economy's got to experience a giant crash at some point soon. the rush t develop is creating a lot of overcapacity and speculation thats bound to come to a halt.

i lived in houston for 11 years and now i moved to china. i havent seen changqing, but i've seen Guangzhou and Shanghai. those two cities are HUGE. there are foreigners everywhere. its kinda cool living in china because i've always been a minority in Houston, but now i am the majority. i think the govt needs to do something about the pollution which has been the major dissatisfaction of my stay here. good luck to the earthquake victims in sichuan.

breathtaking development. i could barely see the sky though, is that pollution? if so, that's gonna kill china and the world. i was in beijing last summer, and the air was absolutely hellish.

Cnburbridge & genn_star: WELCOME to Current! You'll be addicted soon enough!

To Adam and to everyone at Vanguard, thank you for ALL of your hard work. I look forward to watching your pods every Wednesday night. I no longer have cable, so hooray for Current.com!

Stellar reporting and very compelling report indeed!
I was very impressed by the reporter's approach and his willingness to get in there and mingle with people, which is pretty unusual for newspeople to do. I was also struck by the pollution of the city which has got to be china's biggest challenge henceforth.

I just discovered this channel, and I think I'll be tuning in more regularly.

I was exploring on my mom's cable, and found your station for the first time. This is amazing! I am not a "young person," but I find that I love the style of the reporting, the casual, real perspective.

Particularly, this was a great piece. I really appreciated it. Having just spent a month traveling around Britain, I am very struck by how (a) it seems like it would be relatively doable to try to "describe" a place; (b) it is not. One realizes quickly that there are so many perspectives, that whatever you say is limited by what you say! ;-) Having said this, this gave me a great number of perspectives on a place that -- as you say -- I had never heard of before.

Fantastic story. It was great to be able to see so many different parts/aspects of China surrounding this one issue - there are so many factors and so many consequences.

I especially like that quote "One who earns money in China is a winner. One who earns money in overseas is a hero." It really seems to reflects the different atmosphere that exists there.

this city is insane! I am stunned by the level of growth in China. I've made several trips to Shanghai in the last few years, but I had not been all that familiar with chongqing.
thanks for the amazingly fun ride adam, this was a really great pod.

while china's development is in overdrive, you really have to wonder what will happen when (not if, but when) things slow down. this type of growth is unsustainable and the excess capacity is an issue, even for a nation with 1/5 the world's population.

I really enjoyed this, as I enjoy all of your work Adam. You were able to capture many perspectives and show us a changing country. I am really interested in where China is headed in the global arena.

Love this pod. I like how we can view a person's life in China. Very informative and thought provoking.

Great job, Adam, I'm a fan of your work. Excellent portrait of the city from various perspectives. I have spent my fair share of time in Chongqing--I agree with you it is hard to describe without frequent superlatives.

I just caught this on television last night. Bravo on a job well done. I've lived in China and have seen firsthand the remarkable changes taking shape, in terms of the country, but also in terms of the people's outlook. In some ways it seems as though the Chinese people have captured the spirit and ambition that was once proudly on display here in the states. They look at us, are inspired and determined to emulate our lifestyles, for better or worse. I guess that explains the growing car culture and associated pollution.

I was stunned at the statistic about the number of people studying English almost equaling the population of the US! The educational aspirations of the Chinese should put the world on notice.

If you have been to Chong Qing, you'll find this video just shows you a very limited side of that city. No matter how properous a city is, there must be a dark side. if you insistently dig it, you will find the facts. so wise men always believe what they see in person, and more importantly, from a comprehensive perspective.

Adam, you told a great story. Looking forward to what else you will be reporting on China.

Chongqing is Amazing! The pod really shows both sides of the expansion paradigm. Complex to say the least.

I like this; you can parallel it to the growth of America. What i can not believe is that China is Communist. what is communist about it???? my father worked in Nanghi outside of Bejing.
I think like any new growing country; the will have growing environmental pain.

Great pod, Adam. It's impressive the level of development that is taken place in China. But if they want to attract people into the city, they seriously have to do something about the air. It looks extremely polluted!!!

I think China is going to have a major market crash like the U.S did back in the 20's, & might not be able to rebound from it.

super cool pods. China's gonna OWN america one day if we don't get it together!