THE NEW WILD WEST.

This article focuses on China's efforts to develop the city of Chongqing. Once China's World War II capital, this industrial metropolis of seven million people, 1,500 miles up the Yangtze River from Shanghai, is a labyrinth of half-finished highways, nearly completed office towers, and just-demolished buildings. To back its bet, the state is pouring money into a titanic public-works program that dispatches clouds of construction dust into the fog that regularly cloaks Chongqing's hilly streets.