Amidst its garish neon lights, eight-lane superhighways and Blade Runner-esque skyscrapers, that's Shanghai today. No other city in the world has experienced the incredible velocity of change that has occurred in Shanghai since 1990 - the year Deng Xiaopeng gave his official blessing for the city to re-emerge as China's trading and financial center. Since Shanghai's re-birth, more than 4,000 new skyscrapers have been built (with another 300 currently under construction). Its population has increased by 23 percent to 16.4 million, making it the world's fifth largest metropolis. And its economy has grown at an annual rate often double that of China's turbo-charged national average of 7-8 percent.