Shenzhenese are proud of their railway terminal, which is a good quarter-mile long and ten stories high, clad in mirrored glass. Centered high on the side of the building, enormous in red neon, are the Hanzi characters for Shen Zhen, drawn in a rather spidery hand. Supposedly the calligrapher was none other than Deng Xiaoping. He launched the SEZ thirteen years ago, then swung through recently and spoke the immortal words "I like this," which has led to the founding of more SEZs in other parts of China.

I wandered through the hall where passengers line up to buy tickets, if they haven't already bought them from the cellphone-brandishing wise guys loitering outside. The space was regularly interrupted by heavy structural pillars, three or four feet on a side, sheathed in white stone.

A gaping hole had been kicked in one of them, revealing that the "pillar" was actually a column of air with several naked strands of inch-and-a-half-thick rebar wandering through it.

Holes had been kicked in other pillars by inquisitive passengers, affirming that the builders had not bothered to pour a single tablespoon of actual concrete.

Paul Lau, a Hong Kong-based photographer, accompanied me.

"Corruption," he said, shaking his head in exasperation like a farmer who's just discovered a cutworm infestation in his field.

Corruption in China is no secret, but the way it's covered in

Western media suggests that it's just an epiphenomenon attached to the government. In fact, corruption is the government. It's like jungle vines that have twined around a tree and strangled it - now the tree has rotted out and only the vines remain. Much of this stems from the way China is modernizing its economy.

If you thought zaibatsus were creepy, if Singapore's brand of state-backed capitalism gives you the willies, wait until you see the Sino-foreign joint venture. The Russians, in their efforts to turn capitalist, have at least tried to break up some of the big state monopolies and privatize their enterprises - but since