Here is a report from a local girl who grew up with the changes:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-38489435
As for myself I grew older and sadder with the changes.
People write to me and remember the good times so wistfully. My response is always : Don't come back you will be disappointed.

This was the saddest line in the whole story for me:

"Some tourists bought up huge quantities of baby milk powder, leaving local parents without enough."

It isn't that the local parents were left without milk powder. What saddened me was that the milk powder obviously wasn't readily available back in mainland China.

Not that Mira, or maybe close. The so called milk powder sold to parents in China was melamine powder , and many babies died. So people flooded here to buy our milk power which isnt deadly.

Chinese people living here in Australia also took advantage of the demand for baby formula in China to buy up all the supplies here to re-sell it back home (for triple the price), thus causing acute shortages in Australia and creating a crisis situation for Australian mothers who were not able to breastfed for whatever reason and couldn't get formula to feed their babies. Our major supermarket chains had to start rationing the number of cans that could be purchased as people were going into one supermarket after another clearing the shelves of stock.

Yes Carole I saw that. We have had rationing for ages. So sad to turn crime on Mums and babies.