China's economic slowdown hits Chongqing's industrial heart: NPR

He should take care of his convenience store, but today he is picking tiny green bays along the road and pulling them on the birds with his slingshot. The 26-year-old is distracted by his worries. He spent all his savings – the equivalent of $ 35,000 – in a store that has more customers.

He bought the store a year ago after hearing about the economy of Hechuan, this city of over a million inhabitants located just outside the metropolis of Chongqing, in southwestern China, was booming. Hechuan's automobile factories employed thousands of people who manufactured SUVs for the consumer class in China.

"My store has worked well for a month after my move here," he says, targeting a bird on top of a tree. "But then everyone is gone, now they are all gone, and every day more and more people are leaving."

The assembly lines have been closed, the workers have left and the streets, shops and the Hechuan wallet are now empty. His convenience store is still open, but almost no one buys anything, so he took another job next door as a fast food delivery man. He says that he rarely has to work because the restaurant is usually empty. He pays the equivalent of $ 500 a month.

"I'm barely going through," he says. "I'm waiting to see if the economy will recover this year. When I lose all my money, I'll leave."

Hechuan was integrated into the Greater Chongqing Municipality, one of four megacities placed under the control of the Chinese central government and the only one located off the coast. The population of more than 30 million people in Chongqing lives in lush mountains and its hilly downtown area is divided by the Yangtze River.

It is the Chinese capital of blue-collar, housing a budding middle class and a factory landscape in the heart of China's industrial sector; a heart whose pace weakens.

Overall, China has announced its slowest economic growth in nearly three decades, a historic slowdown due to weak domestic demand and a tense trade war with the United States.

For more than a decade, Chongqing's economy has grown with double-digit annual growth. growth. But last year, the city's gross domestic product grew less than expected to 6% – its slowest pace since 1989, according to the report. Morning of South China. Industrial production as a whole rose only 3%, the lowest level in 30 years, the site said, while production in the automotive sector fell by more than 17% compared to the previous year. last year.

Zhong Hua, 38, is among thousands of people fired from his assembly line job in the Ford joint venture with the Chinese company Chang & # 39; an. His position was completed four months ago. "The economy is falling," Zhong said at an employment fair in an office building in Chongqing. It's the eighth job fair in which he has participated since he's lost his job. "We can feel the impact of the trade war with the United States here.The auto industry is in recession.There are so many unemployed."

Zhong says he finds it hard to stay afloat and support his wife and two children on his government's checks, equivalent to about $ 200 a month.

Figures released by the Chinese Renmin University Research Institute of Employment in Beijing show that the job supply in western China, including including Chongqing, fell 77% in the fourth quarter of last year compared to the same period in 2017.

Qiu Dongyang, a professor at the MBA Education Center of Chongqing University of Technology, said that Chongqing's economy was slowing down, but he said that it was a good thing.

The city's auto sector has been hit hard, but the growing service sector in China has provided jobs for some of the laid-off workers. "It is normal for growth to slow down so the economy has reached a plateau and the infrastructure and development of the city have performed well," Qiu said.

After decades of demolition and reconstruction, downtown Chongqing has finally become an astonishing mix of the natural world – mountains covered by forests crossed by rivers – with a vertical landscape glittering with steel and glass towers. But in the urban jungle, unfinished projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars, such as the village of Hongyan Jialing River Bridge, west of downtown Chongqing. The construction of the bridge, worth $ 660 million, began in 2012 but has been halted for three years, apparently due to a lack of funding. What remains are massive pillars rising from the Jialing River alongside cranes frozen in time.

"The city has also built other bridges," said Lai Sanhui, 72. "There are so many unfinished bridges."

Lai goes to a park near the unfinished bridge every day to check on her progress. "They stopped working for a few years," he says. "It would be over already if they had not stopped working on it."

Two years ago, capital investments, which include infrastructure spending, accounted for nearly 90 percent of Chongqing's annual GDP. But according to last year's data, capital investment slowed by 3% over the previous year.

An upcoming city project is expected to be Chongqing's tallest structure: an eight-tower development that will soon become Raffles City Chongqing. According to Raffles City General Manager Vincent Wong, it is set to become the world's tallest residential building with 74 floors.

But Wong says that the Singaporean developer of Raffles City sold 95% of the flats of the first two towers three years ago, but when they opened a third residential tower last year, they did not sell it. have sold only 35%.

To make room for the project, the city destroyed much of its iconic wharf where boats traditionally stopped to climb the Yangtze River.

Chongqing is famous for its street bearers, known as "bangbang", which means "stick sticks" – freelancers who use bamboo sticks to transport heavy objects from the dock. The development project put hundreds of them out of work.

This is not the case of 68-year-old Zhang Peiqing, who has worked as a porter in the city for more than two decades and has gone through ups and downs. "The country is better than before," Zhang said. "But it would be even better if Bo Xilai had not been kidnapped."

This is a sensitive topic, but many are whispering: Bo Xilai, secretary of the Chongqing Communist Party at the height of the city's boom a decade ago, was a potential candidate to lead China. He was removed from office in 2012 as part of a corruption investigation. who paved the way for President Xi Jinping to become the leader of China the following year.

"If Bo played the role of Xi Jinping, foreigners would not dare to intimidate us as they do now," Zhang said. "The economy is paralyzed since his departure."

Whether it's a premature departure from Bo, bullying abroad or mere economic considerations, a car salesman who only gives his last name, Zhou, says that the economy has never felt so bad. "It's the same everywhere in the country," he says in an empty car showroom. "We are all in the same boat."

Zhou sells SUVs made by Bisu, a Chinese auto company based in Hechuan City, which has laid off a large part of its workforce because of weak sales. "I was selling between one and two dozen cars a month," recalls Zhou. "Now, I'm lucky if I'm selling one."

It's a harsh reality for a salesperson working on commission. He found another job to support his family.

Still, it's a happy result compared to that of a colleague who only gives his last name, Zhang. The 40-year-old electrician from Yinxiang Group, parent company of SUV Bisu brand, is one of the last remaining workers of the company in Hechuan.

"They have not been paying our salaries for a few months now," Zhang complains. "When the workers protested, the company dismissed them all and punished anyone who said something bad about the company."

And that's why Zhang does not give his full name. He says the boss of the Yinxiang group owns residential towers in Hechuan. Many families who live there have been forced to leave their land to make room for the company's two automobile factories, which are now empty.

Yinxiang Group representatives hung up every time NPR called for an interview, but according to the company's website, the company spent nearly $ 2 billion for a development in Hechuan called "Yinxiang Town", filled with condos, hot springs and entertainment complexes.

According to Zhang, Yinxiang Group employees are puzzled by the fact that the company continues to develop this development with impatience behind rows of empty factories. "In the meantime, they do not pay us," he says. "The factory does not work, but here they are under construction."

For the moment, said Zhang, he will continue to work in the hope that one day he will be paid again after months without pay. He says that he can not afford to stop smoking.

NPR's Shanghai office assistant, Yuhan Xu, helped research this story.