
Over the past 30 years China has been through drastic changes, most notably the economic reforms of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which brought with them shiny high-rise buildings and industrial centres where farms, markets and fishing villages once stood.

Reuters photographers have been documenting this transformation over the decades. In the above 1990 photograph, villagers attend a rally in Shaanxi province.

Facing economic difficulties in the late 1970s, China’s leaders enacted extensive market reforms. State-owned enterprises were sold off and government administered land was handed off to the farmers working it, for a share of the profits paid back into the treasury. But the changes go even further back than 30 years. Hong Kong was one of the first places in the country to see skyscrapers shoot up. The city’s Victoria Harbour, seen here in 1865, was originally called Hong Kong Harbour. When the British decided to house a naval fleet there they renamed it for Queen Victoria.

The pre-colonial fishing village is now Hong Kong's high-tech Central District where neon lit skyscraper house the movers and shakers of the city’s vibrant commercial and banking industries and where the centre of government and several consulates are also based.