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 up 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".
Yet for all the fanfare, the people of Tianshui are not much better off. Its 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 that of Beijing and now it is 14%.
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.
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.
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.
