"Welcome to the Bihar of China," says a Chinese official as the Airbus touches down at Lanzhou airport. Visions of Patna airport race through the mind. Betel stains, a rickety bus to the terminal and baggage being thrown wildly on the conveyor belt.
Alas, none of that. A smart steel and glass airport welcomes you and the baggage arrives within minutes. Driving out of the airport gates, a 70-km drive from the city will take just under an hour, promises the bus driver.
And no wonder, a four-lane concrete toll highway allows for speeds that India's best-known highways do.
If this is the gateway to Gansu, one of China's poorest provinces, the swarthy economic powerhouse of Asia is clearly ready to showcase its poverty.
Thousands of miles inland from the commanding heights of Shanghai, Guangdong and Beijing, this is where another Chinese miracle is quietly unfolding — a miracle that will permanently bind the economic successes of its urban centres and its suburban sweatshops to its farming communities, ensuring that a billion people step up on the platform of prosperity around the same time.
The province of 26 million people may have been left behind as leaders in Beijing marched ahead on the road to economic success, doffing their Communist caps at dizzy statistics of growth...
But Gansu, where more than 200 children out of 1,000 died before the first year and people didn't live beyond the average age of 35, now boasts of a 75-year life expectancy and an average per capita annual GDP of about $1,000.
True that's a poor fraction of the figures for Shanghai and Beijing, but for those who believe India and China are running in the same race, it is 10 times the per capita GDP of Bihar.
Peering out for a glimpse of poverty, one is forced to crane one's neck at the rising skyscrapers of Lanzhou, the provincial capital and shield the eyes from the stark neon-ness of new-found prosperity.
Lanzhou boasts of a dozen five-star hotels and streets jammed with Audis, Buicks and Volkswagens.
Beyond Lanzhou's high-rise cityscape are undulating grasslands criss-crossed by rivulets that pool in eventually to form the mighty Yellow River. It's here that China is hoping to skip several stages of classical development and create a modern society and economy by pulling it up by the scruff of its neck.
There have been reports of farmlands forcibly taken away for setting up factories (the province soaks in $20 to
$30 million in annual foreign investments), but Chinese authorities insist what's being forged is a "new socialist
countryside".
As a result, money is now being poured in under a central fiat to transform the rural areas. Outside the city, powerful SUVs jostle for road space with locally-made Gong Deng flatbed trucks heaped with melons.
"Here people aren't rich," says Wang Ai Ke, a local government official. “But if a family member is sick, there's no fear of not getting him to a hospital or if your kid wants to go to a good university, there's no problem
with funds."
Not your typical Bihar story, right?
Alas, none of that. A smart steel and glass airport welcomes you and the baggage arrives within minutes. Driving out of the airport gates, a 70-km drive from the city will take just under an hour, promises the bus driver.
And no wonder, a four-lane concrete toll highway allows for speeds that India's best-known highways do.
If this is the gateway to Gansu, one of China's poorest provinces, the swarthy economic powerhouse of Asia is clearly ready to showcase its poverty.
Thousands of miles inland from the commanding heights of Shanghai, Guangdong and Beijing, this is where another Chinese miracle is quietly unfolding — a miracle that will permanently bind the economic successes of its urban centres and its suburban sweatshops to its farming communities, ensuring that a billion people step up on the platform of prosperity around the same time.
The province of 26 million people may have been left behind as leaders in Beijing marched ahead on the road to economic success, doffing their Communist caps at dizzy statistics of growth...
But Gansu, where more than 200 children out of 1,000 died before the first year and people didn't live beyond the average age of 35, now boasts of a 75-year life expectancy and an average per capita annual GDP of about $1,000.
True that's a poor fraction of the figures for Shanghai and Beijing, but for those who believe India and China are running in the same race, it is 10 times the per capita GDP of Bihar.
Peering out for a glimpse of poverty, one is forced to crane one's neck at the rising skyscrapers of Lanzhou, the provincial capital and shield the eyes from the stark neon-ness of new-found prosperity.
Lanzhou boasts of a dozen five-star hotels and streets jammed with Audis, Buicks and Volkswagens.
Beyond Lanzhou's high-rise cityscape are undulating grasslands criss-crossed by rivulets that pool in eventually to form the mighty Yellow River. It's here that China is hoping to skip several stages of classical development and create a modern society and economy by pulling it up by the scruff of its neck.
There have been reports of farmlands forcibly taken away for setting up factories (the province soaks in $20 to
$30 million in annual foreign investments), but Chinese authorities insist what's being forged is a "new socialist
countryside".
As a result, money is now being poured in under a central fiat to transform the rural areas. Outside the city, powerful SUVs jostle for road space with locally-made Gong Deng flatbed trucks heaped with melons.
"Here people aren't rich," says Wang Ai Ke, a local government official. “But if a family member is sick, there's no fear of not getting him to a hospital or if your kid wants to go to a good university, there's no problem
with funds."
Not your typical Bihar story, right?