ABSTRACT

Driving from Kunming International Airport to the city centre, one is taken by all the skyscrapers that have been built in the last 10 years and which now dominate the skyline of this fast-growing city. The huge exhibition hall along the highway is hosting the annual international industrial fair and is decorated with the flags of many nations, symbolizing the foreign presence in this emerging international economic hub. In contrast, a trip to Shaxi, a remote rural commune in the Himalayan foothills about 500 km northwest of Kunming, is depressing in its poverty but gives a good picture of the existing, and growing, socio-economic gap between urban and rural China.