Channel 4 - Unreported World - Chongqing: Invisible City (2007)

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Little known outside China, Chongqing is the world's fastest growing city. The government is spending billions building its infrastructure. But, as this edition of Unreported World reveals, China's economic boom comes at the expense of tens of millions of workers and dispossessed farmers.

Forty kilometres outside Chongqing, Reporter Ramita Navai and Director Nick Sturdee begin their journey amongst the cranes, new buildings and construction work that stretch for as far as the eye can see. Over the last seven years, the Government has spent a staggering 114 billion pounds on roads, bridges and dams to turn an area two thirds the size of England into a vast transport and manufacturing hub at the centre of the country.

Chongqing is being built on the back of migrant labor. More than fifty per cent of the city's population are migrants and half a million new laborers are drawn to it every year. But, as Unreported World highlights, these migrants are forced to endure years of cramped living conditions with no employment rights at all.

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