When I see the picture from NY times, I think the man who try to find something in the ruin is homeless because he wears almost broken shoes, his clothes look very dirty and his hair is mess. There is obvious contrast between him and a guy who rides the bicycle cross him. I see this picture has another comparison, ruins, sand and these exactly the same residential buildings are under construction. I think the color of this picture is gray, it has depress mood in this picture. This picture shows us China is changing every day, there are a lot of buildings are under construction, on the other side, China still has many poor people, they stand behind these buildings, work in harsh environments. The first big decision made by the new Chinese government is pushing urbanization plan. Chinese government wants to use this plan to obtain a new wave of growth, but present situation is not very optimistic. The government want to finish this transformative really quickly, they need urbanization brings positive impact as soon as possible, they are trying to build many skyscrapers to replace small country buildings, so you can see China has many super cities today.
Ian Johnson in his essay claims that the Communist Party has switched policy many times on peasants' rights to use land over the past decades. I agree with Ian Johnson that the urbanization plan brings many model cities, but if you think throughout superficies, it actually also costs peasants' rights. I am not sure why the Chinese government changes policy on this part all the time, maybe different Chinese leaders has different political attitude. Whoever becomes leader, this government should stand on the peasants' side to think problems. .
However, in today's China, we are building skyscrapers everywhere, every city has very similar construction blueprint, residential area is near the edge of the city and downtown has commercial district.
