Chongqing: Invisible CityGet the Flash Player to see this movie. Chongqing is a port city with the largest municipal area and population in China. It is situated in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers in southwest China. With an area of 82,400 square kilometers (31, 800 square miles), Chongqing shares borders with the provinces of Hubei, Hunan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Shaanxi. Besides the Han who form the majority of its total population of 30.9 million, numerous ethnic groups reside in Chongqing, including Yi, Tibetan, Miao, Qiang, You and Tujia. Chongqing, ChinaSince its founding 3,000 years ago, Chongqing has been called Jiangzhou, Yuzhou, and Gongzhou, before getting its present name nearly 800 years ago. Since the Qin Dynasty (221 BC-206 BC), many dynasties have set up administrative institutions that have endowed the city with brilliant cultures. Perched beside the Yangtze, the "Golden River," Chongqing symbolizes Yangtze River civilizations and is the cradle of Bayu culture. Today, Chongqing is a modern city, China's fourth municipality after Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. Within its borders Chongqing encompasses a wealth of water reserves, mineral resources, dense forests, and abundant flora and fauna. The focal point of the unique Yangtze Three Gorges Dam, Chongqing is a tourist attraction as well as a commercial city. Liberation Monument, ChongqingChongqing attracts visitors from home and abroad for its cultural heritage and other tourist attractions. The city is the starting point for the Yangtze River Cruise, which explores the stunning scenery of the Three Gorges. Other attractions include the Dazu Rock Carvings , valuable works of art carved during the Ninth Century, Gold Buddhist Mountain, a rich repository of diverse animals and plants; and Fishing Town, one of three ancient battlefields in China. Ancient Ci Qi Kou village lures tourists to linger in its streets to buy handicraft souvenirs. Chongqing is famous for its hot Sichuan cuisine and world-famous hotpot dishes. Street vendors as well as restaurants feature exciting spicy delicacies for the adventurers. Servicing western China, Chongqing provides convenient water, land, and air transportation. Hundreds of star-ranked hotels provide excellent facilities and services. Chongqing is ready to be the pilot in the Western China Development to usher in more investors and visitors. |
About Chongqing Chongqing - China's Invisible CityLoad episode one  Chongqing - China's Invisible CityLoad episode one  Chongqing - China's Invisible CityLoad episode three Little known outside China, Chongqing is the world's fastest growing city. Set to become a super city and home to 20 million by 2020, the government is spending billions building its infrastructure. But, as this edition of Unreported World reveals, China's economic boom comes at the expense of tens of millions of workers and dispossessed farmers. Forty kilometres outside Chongqing, Reporter Ramita Navai and Director Nick Sturdee begin their journey amongst the cranes, new buildings and construction work that stretch for as far as the eye can see. Over the last seven years, the Government has spent a staggering 114 billion pounds on roads, bridges and dams to turn an area two thirds the size of England into a vast transport and manufacturing hub at the centre of the country.
One of the China's biggest municipality as well as one of the very large cities in the world; the economic center; the hub of water, land, and air transportation in Southwest China with busy rivers and highways radiating in all directions; and an inland river port with foreign trade in the west of China; an integrated industrial city with balance developed agriculture; called as the "Mountain City", "River City" and reputed for its wonderful scenery. One female farmer, Yu Shu Rong, tells the team that the state had taken her land without any compensation; when she and her husband protested, they were severely beaten security guards. Another group of villagers claim that when they protested against being thrown out of their houses, they too were beaten up, and the developers then bulldozed their crops to force them to move on." The power and confidence of the developers is illustrated shortly afterwards. While speaking to local farmers, the team are prevented from filming by two "security officials" whom the villagers claim are the same individuals who had beaten a group of elderly women for refusing to sign over their land to the developers. Hundreds of millions of migrant labourers and farmers are now being directly affected by China's development. Social unrest has rocketed with tens of thousands of protests involving millions of people and, as Unreported World concludes, unless the government starts taking account of them, the country could be heading for a crisis. |
Chongqing is being built on the back of migrant labour. More than fifty per cent of the city's population are migrants and half a million new labourers are drawn to it every year. But, as Unreported World highlights, these migrants are forced to endure years of cramped living conditions with no employment rights at all. Navai visits one apartment block and finds more than 40 men crammed into one flat, with 20 sleeping in just one room. They tell her that while they earn three times what they would in the countryside they're still too poor for their families to join them. If they're lucky they'll see their wives and children a couple of times a year. And their lack of rights means they are easily exploited by the factory owners. Navai meets one group of workers who have been demonstrating for 20 days. They claim that they are owed money and have been thrown out of their jobs and homes without compensation, and tell Navai that if the government doesn't act, mass anger cannot be stopped. Before they can film any more, the team are detained by the local police, anxious to prevent the outside world seeing pictures of the demonstration. As well as factory workers, farmers are also suffering as the government evicts them from the land they are farming, often without the compensation to which they are legally entitled. When they protest, the farmers are sometimes beaten.
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