The flies swarm in

TRAVEL through China's vast, poor hinterland, and even there you will find it: ordinary Chinese being urged, insistently, to take part in the telecoms and computer revolutions. In some of the most backward cities, consumers are assailed by billboards that weave dreams around mobile phones or the latest Chinese dot.com company. In the countryside, Communist-style slogans painted on village walls promise a better life if households would only get a telephone. And in the down-at-heel town of Wanxian, on the steep banks of the Yangzi river 1,900 km from the coast, a red banner across the main street announces “Breast enlargement by computer”.