Shanghai, Hamburg use history to forge future

Two cities draw on each other's resources to renew their friendship.

You would be hard-pressed to find a more identical pair of non-identical twins. On one side is Shanghai, straddling the mighty Huangpu River, which acts as one of its chief economic arteries. On the other side is Hamburg, sitting astride the Elbe, which acts similarly for the German port city.

Shanghai is now reveling in worldwide attention as it goes about setting up a free trade zone, and the German city glories in its official title, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, commemorating among other things its place in a powerful trading bloc of the late Middle Ages.