ABSTRACT
"In the beginning of the 1970s," as a People's Republic of China publication explains, "the country's economic life had 'three breakouts' [sange tupo]." China's largest metropolis prospers on manufacturing and trade, not extraction. Shanghai has, for example, the dubious distinction of being practically the only province-level unit in China never to have produced any coal. Before 1949, Shanghai industrialists were famed for their sharpness in trade and finance as well as management. Shanghai's urban industry grew more slowly in the early 1970s than in the late 1960s. From 1966 to 1970, Shanghai's national income grew at a rate of 14.0 percent annually. Fair conclusions about Shanghai taxes can be several, despite the complexity of the situation and real uncertainties that arise from it. In economic terms over many years, the extraction has surely been too high for China's maximum long-term growth, and probably for most mixed tastes that would give any weight to the value of economic expansion.
