Chongqing rolls on

摘要

Like many local governments in China, Chongqing's has an exhibition hall devoted to its dreams. Its scale models show an urban core sprawling outwards with thickets of new apartment blocks: cheap housing for the masses built at vast government expense. Bo Xilai, who governed the region's 30m people, 5m of them in Chongqing city, made big spending on public works his hallmark. His purge was seen in some quarters as the result of a struggle between two competing models of governance: the "Guangdong model", in which economic liberalism is matched with pragmatic decision-making, and the "Chongqing model", emphasising the importance of state-owned enterprises (soes) and traditional socialist values. But the Chongqing model trumpeted by Mr Bo's supporters was by no means unique to Chongqing. Nor is it dead.