Economic and cultural rebound (1990s – Present) Nanjing Road in Shanghai in 2003 Political power in Shanghai has traditionally been seen as a stepping stone to higher positions within the PRC central government. In the 1990s, there was what was often described as the politically right-of-center “Shanghai clique,” which included the president of the PRC Jiang Zemin and the premier of the PRC Zhu Rongji. Starting in 1992, the central government under Jiang Zemin, a former Mayor of Shanghai, began Reducing the tax burden on Shanghai and encouraging both foreign and domestic investment in order to Promote it as the economic hub of East Asia and To encourage its role as gateway of investment to the Chinese interior. Since then it has experienced continuous economic growth of between 9-15 annually, arguably at the expense of growth in Hong Kong, leading China’s overall development. The city’s modern transformation did not really begin until the third generation of president Jiang Zemin came to power in 1992.The remarkable development of the Pudong zone offers a compelling example of the various political mechanisms, players, complexity and character of urban land development and spatial change in the context of China’s rapidly growing transitional economy. Shanghai is China’s largest and greatest commercial and industrial city. With 0.1 of the land area of the country, it supplies over 12 of the municipal revenue and handles more than a quarter of total trade passing through China’s ports. Its year 2000 population, according to China’s latest census, was 16.74 million and represented an increase of 3.4 million from the 1990 size with an average annual growth rate through the decade of the 1990s of 2.2 and a total increase of 25.5 . The average size of a family in Shanghai had Declined to fewer than three people during the last decade, and it is clear that most of Shanghai’s population growth is driven by migration rather than natural factors based on high birth and fertility rates. Shanghai has for many years had the lowest birth rate in China, a rate lower than large American cities such as New York.As with most cities in China, Shanghai is overbounded in its administrative territory. The city in the year 2000 was composed of 17 urban districts and three counties together occupying 6300 km of land area. The three counties contain Substantial rural land and a number of rural residents who continue to farm for their livelihood. The city has the highest population density of all the first order administrative units in China, with 2657 people per km in 2000. Owing to its continued growth and industrial and commercial development, Shanghai also has the highest index of urbanization among all of China’s first order administrative units, with 88.3 of the official population (14.78 million) classified as urban. The amount of building activity in Shanghai fueled by government investment expenditures continues to be astounding. Since the 1980s, Shanghai’s economy shifted from over 77 of gross domestic product in secondary manufacturing sector to a more balanced sectoral distribution of 48 in industry and 51 in services in 2000 and 2001.Employment in manufacturing reached almost 60 in 1990 and has since Steadily Declined to 41 in 2001, while employment in the tertiary sector has grown from 30 in 1990 to more than 47 in 2001, a remarkable expansion of employment in service activities in step with Shanghai’s reemergence as a commercial city.