China’s high-tech rise is leaving much of the country behind That could make a** starkly unequal** country even more so Jun 2nd 2026|TIANSHUI|6 min read Listen to this story LIKE MANY cities in China’s hinterland, Tianshui, in the western province of Gansu, is full of dusty and disused factories. But over the past decade it has also become an unlikely high-tech hub. New industrial parks have sprouted, offering companies cheap energy, financing and land deals. The city has already built an exhibition hall to display the zippy products it hopes to make in the future, called “Tianshui Industry 2050”. All this will please officials in far-off Beijing. They want China’s rust belt to reinvent itself with technology. Just recently they released yet another plan for urban renewal, calling for the transformation of stagnant cities into “innovative” places that can offer their inhabitants a “high-quality life”. Yet for all the fanfare, the people of Tianshui are not much better off. The new factories have failed to offset a broader slowdown in the city’s economy: ten years ago Tianshui’s GDP per person was 16% of Beijing’s; now it is 14%. In 2025 the city’s economy grew at a rate two percentage points slower than the national average. Nor, say locals, have the highly automated facilities created many jobs for them. Throngs of young people are leaving in search of better opportunities. Over the past decade, its population has shrunk by nearly half a million to 2.9m. At this rate, by 2050 there will be few workers left. The tale of Tianshui shows the limits of China’s big bet on advanced manufacturing. The Communist Party has decided the country’s economic future lies in making world-beating technology. So hundreds of cities across the country are, like Tianshui, trying hard to do so. But while the high-tech drive has helped some brainy, connected and wealthy cities become even richer, most of those in the hinterland lack the supply chains or talent to take advantage of it. After all, some 60% of China’s workforce—about 500m people—do not even have a high-school education. Many of them live in smaller and poorer cities. For centuries Tianshui was more a cultural than an economic hub. Legend has it that China’s first emperor, a serpent-bodied demi-god, was born there; Buddhist grottoes have been cut out of the cliffs nearby. But in the 1960s Tianshui industrialised. It became an important cog in the state-planned economy; its factories made tractors, ball bearings and matches. A tale of two cities Dormitories, schools and hospitals were built to cater to the swelling labour force. One of the workers was Ms Dong, now in her 80s, who enjoyed an ultra-stable “iron rice bowl” job at a printing press. She retired in her 40s with a good pension and a guarantee that her son could inherit her job. But most local factories were not competitive enough to survive China’s bumpy transition to a more market-driven economy in the 1980s and 1990s. In the past ten years a new generation of high-tech factories, making gizmos such as sensors and machine tools, has sprung up. But they have not brought many jobs with them. An exhibit at Tianshui’s museum displays snapshots of the city’s factory floors over the decades. Each shows fewer workers and more robots. Most of the factory positions that are available pay around 3,000 yuan ($440) a month, according to locals, half what they could get in a big city like Shanghai. “I’d like to stay here to settle down, but there’s just no good jobs for young people,” says Wen Jin, a 27-year-old Tianshui native who has moved to Jiangsu province, a wealthy eastern region. The city’s best days are firmly in the past, reckons Ma Xin, another local in his 20s who is hoping to get out. High-tech industries do create well-paid jobs as well, in research and development, for instance. But these positions are mainly clustered in big cities near China’s coast, like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, which boast the best universities, brightest graduates and access to the densest supply chains. Tech-sector salaries in such places have shot up in recent years, some topping 1m yuan a year. But few parts of inland China have a chance of attracting such stellar jobs, explains Dan Wang of Eurasia Group, a consultancy. “The vast majority of Chinese cities are stuck with what they have.” Even as Tianshui is unable to gain from China’s new economic model, it struggles with the problems of the old one. China’s growth has slowed in recent years thanks, in large part, to a lingering property crisis that is gripping the country. House prices have fallen fastest in smaller cities like Tianshui. Unfinished concrete flats litter the city’s outskirts; investment in property there fell by over 40% last year. This in turn has been a drag on consumption because people feel poorer. Total retail sales in Tianshui slipped by a little over 5% in 2025. Gloomy walks through its malls reveal shuttered shops and empty restaurants. There is a risk that these trends, multiplied across China’s smaller cities, will cause the gaps between the country’s haves and have-nots to widen further. The economic slowdown seems to have hit the poor hardest, according to data compiled by Li Shi, a professor at Zhejiang University in the eastern city of Hangzhou. In a paper published in April he cited surveys showing that China’s bottom tenth of workers by income saw their wages rise by only 2% per year from 2018 to 2023, compared with an average annual growth rate of around 5%. China’s government knows that high-tech factories are not an economic panacea. Investment in machinery and other physical assets “has fuelled China’s economic boom, but its returns have gradually declined”, noted Xinhua, the official state news agency, earlier this year. China’s latest five-year plan, which was released in March and covers the period to 2030, called for “investing in people” as well as factories, to make the economy more equal. In practice, that would mean much more government spending on education, particularly for children from poor families, giving them the skills and knowledge to get better-paid jobs. But as the people of Tianshui would attest, that is easier said than done. The city’s budget is far smaller than those of wealthy places—it spends less than one-third of the amount per pupil in school that Beijing does, for example. And the economic downturn threatens to turn this into a cycle of decline; the city’s fiscal revenues fell by nearly a tenth last year. Few of Tianshui’s students ever make it to the country’s best universities. “It’s too difficult for children to compete here,” says Shi Tingting, the mother of a 12-year-old girl. “They end up trapped.” ■ 中國的高科技崛起正將這個國家的很大一部分留在後面 那可能使一個明顯不平等的國家變得更加如此 2026年6月2日 | 天水 | 6分鐘閱讀時間 像許多在中國腹地的城市一樣，天水，在西部省份甘肅，充滿了落滿灰塵的和廢棄的工廠。 但在過去十年間它也已經成為一個出乎意料的高科技樞紐。 新工業園區已經湧現，提供公司廉價的能源、融資和土地交易。 這座城市已經建造了一個展覽廳來展示它希望在未來製造的敏捷的產品，叫做「天水工業2050」。 這一切將會取悅在遙遠北京的官員們。 他們想要中國的鐵鏽地帶用技術來重塑自身。 就在最近他們發布了又一個關於城市更新的計劃，呼籲將停滯的城市轉型為能夠為他們的居民提供「高質量生活」的「創新的」地方。 然而儘管有所有的宣傳，天水的人民並沒有好過多少。 新的工廠已經未能抵消在這座城市經濟中一個更廣泛的放緩：十年前天水的人均GDP是北京的16%；現在它是14%。 在2025年這座城市的經濟以一個比全國平均慢兩個百分點的速度增長。 當地人說，高度自動化的設施也沒有為他們創造許多工作。 成群的年輕人正為了尋找更好的機會而離開。 在過去十年間，它的人口已經萎縮了接近五十萬到290萬。 照這個速度，到2050年將會幾乎沒有工人留下。 天水的故事顯示了中國在先進製造業上的大賭注的局限。 共產黨已經決定這個國家的經濟未來在於製造舉世無雙的技術。 所以全國各地數以百計的城市正像天水一樣，努力嘗試這樣做。 但是雖然高科技驅動已經幫助了一些聰明的、有脈絡的且富裕的城市變得更加富有，大多數在腹地的那此城市缺乏供應鏈或人才來利用它。 畢竟，大約60%的中國勞動力——大約5億人——甚至沒有一個高中教育。 他們中的許多人居住在較小的和較窮的城市。 幾個世紀以來天水更多是一個文化的而非經濟的樞紐。 傳說它說中國的第一位皇帝，一個蛇身的半神，出生在那裡；佛教石窟已經從附近的峭壁上被開鑿出來。 但在1960年代天水工業化了。 它成為了國家計劃經濟中一個重要的齒輪；它的工廠製造拖拉機、滾珠軸承和火柴。 雙城記 宿舍、學校和醫院被建造來迎合膨脹的勞動力。 工人中的一個是董女士，現在在她80多歲，其在一家印刷廠享受了一個超穩定的「鐵飯碗」工作。 她在她40多歲時退休，帶著一份好的退休金和一個她的兒子能夠繼承她的工作的保證。 但大多數本地的工廠不夠有競爭力到足以在1980年代和1990年代中國向一個更加市場驅動的經濟的顛簸轉型中倖存。 在過去十年中新一代的高科技工廠，製造諸如傳感器和機床之類的小玩意，已經湧現。 但是它們沒有隨之帶來許多工作。 在天水博物館的一個展品展示了這座城市的工廠車間幾十年來的快照。 每一張顯示更少的工人和更多的機器人。 根據當地人，大多數可獲得的工廠職位每個月支付大約3,000元（440美元），是他們在一個像上海這樣的大城市所能得到的（數額的）一半。 「我想留在此地定居，但是就是沒有給年輕人的好工作，」文進說，一位27歲的天水本地人，其已經搬到了江蘇省，一個富裕的東部地區。 這座城市最好的日子過去了，馬鑫估計，另一位在他20多歲正希望離開的當地人。 高科技產業也確實創造高薪的工作，例如，在研究與開發中。 但這些職位主要聚集在靠近中國海岸的大城市，像北京、上海和深圳，其坐擁最好的大學、最聰明的畢業生以及獲取最密集供應鏈的途徑。 在這樣的地方科技部門的薪水在近年來已經飆升，一些一年超過100萬元。 但是很少有中國內陸的部分有吸引這樣輝煌工作的機會，歐亞集團（一家諮詢公司）的丹·王解釋道。 「絕大多數的中國城市都與他們所擁有的困在一起。」 即使當天水無法從中國的新經濟模式中獲益時，它與舊模式的問題作鬥爭。 中國的增長在近年來已經放緩，這在很大程度上”歸功”於一場正席捲這個國家的揮之不去的房地產危機。 房價在像天水這樣較小的城市中下跌得最快。 未完工的水泥公寓散落在这座城市的郊區；在那裡的房地產投資在去年下降了超過40%。 這反過來已經成為消費的一個拖累，因為人們感覺更窮了。 天水的總零售銷售在2025年下滑了稍微超過5%。 穿過它的購物中心的憂鬱散步透露出關門的商店和空蕩的餐廳。 有一個風險是這些趨勢，在中國較小的城市中乘數放大，將會導致這個國家的富有者與一無所有者之間的差距進一步擴大。 經濟放緩似乎已經對窮人打擊最重，根據由李實編纂的數據，一位在東部城市杭州的浙江大學的教授。 在四月發表的一篇論文中他引用了調查，顯示按收入計中國最底層十分之一的工人看到他們的工資從2018年到2023年每年只增長2%，相比之下與大約5%的平均年度增長率。 中國的政府知道高科技工廠不是一個經濟萬靈丹。 在機械和其他實體資產上的投資「已經給中國的經濟繁榮注入燃料，但它的回報已經逐漸下降」，新華社，官方的國家通訊社，在今年早些時候指出。 中國最新的五年計劃，其在三月被發布且涵蓋到2030年的時期，呼籲「投資於人」以及工廠，來使經濟更加平等。 在實踐中，那將意味著多得多的在教育上的政府開支，特別是對於來自貧困家庭的兒童，給予他們技能和知識來獲得更好薪水的工作。 但是正如天水的人民會證實的，那是說起來容易做起來難。 這座城市的預算遠小於那些富裕地方的——例如，它在學校中在每位學生身上花費的金額少於北京所做的三分之一。 而且經濟低迷威脅要將這變成一個衰退的循環；這座城市的財政收入在去年下降了接近十分之一。 很少有天水的學生曾經成功進入這個最好的大學。 「對於孩子們來說在這裡競爭太困難了，」史婷婷說，一位12歲女孩的母親。 「他們最終被困住。」 --Hosting provided by SoundOn