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Xu Kuangdi
Mayor of Shanghai
From a wasteland he built a towering dream

Meet the man who has transformed Pudong - across the Huangpu River from Shanghai - from a mudflat into a glittering highrise financial center that may one day rival Hong Kong or Tokyo. Xu Kuangdi has been mayor of Shanghai for less than five years, but has accomplished more in that period than some people could achieve in a lifetime. This remarkable performance is made all the more extraordinary by the fact that there is little in Xu's early years to suggest he would turn out to be such a farsighted reformer. A native of Tongxiang county in prosperous Zhejiang province, Xu was born into a modest intellectual family. "I grew up in a traditional home immersed in Chinese culture," he says. "My parents were content in poverty and devoted to things spiritual." Xu seemed more devoted to things metallic. Graduating in 1959 from the Department of Metallurgy at the Beijing Iron and Steel Institute, he stayed on as department tutor, becoming its vice chairman in 1963. During the 1960s, he developed a stainless steel pipe for use in the country's aircraft - a breakthrough that won him a national award. But acclaim was short-lived. Like most intellectuals at the time, Xu fell foul of the Cultural Revolution. He was sent to the countryside to carry out manual labor and receive re-education from the peasants. Back to work, he earned another accolade - this time for upgrading the quality of Chinese bearing steel. All worthy stuff, but there was still no sign of what was to come. Xu returned to academe, eventually assuming the chairmanship of the Metallurgy Department at the Shanghai Industrial University. He joined the party late in life, in 1983. Six years later, his political career at last took off when he took charge of Shanghai education. Within two years, he was promoted to the Shanghai municipal planning commission, where he revolutionized the city's civil-service recruiting system. His reforms caught the eye of the leadership in Beijing. Now there seemed little stopping him. Vice mayor of Shanghai from 1992 to 1994, Xu took over as mayor in February 1995. Under his tutelage, Pudong has soared. Once dismissed as a state planner's folly, it is now home to about 90 of the Fortune 500 top companies. Among them: General Motors, Hewlett Packard, IBM and NEC. Some 45 banks now operate there. Pudong suffers from a glut of office space at the moment, but the mocking of a few years ago has stopped. At 61, Xu is clearly destined for greater things in the capital before long. But is he willing to go?He once said: "If I can accomplish more things for the people of Shanghai, I'd be willing to stay on for another term." Pudong is a marvel, but it is not yet complete.

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Photo: Zhang Yaozhi - Xinhua