In one of China’s poorest provinces, mountainous Guizhou, millions of lives have been transformed by an unprecedented infrastructure spending spree.

At Evergrande Happiness Number 33 Village — named after the now highly indebted real estate company that built it — several hundred farmers were persuaded two years ago to leave the cornfields and mud-floored homes of their ancestral hamlets and move to the newly constructed settlement.

Along with the change of housing came the promise of jobs in a booming construction sector. Infrastructure investment in Guizhou has grown 20 per cent annually over the past five years with the state adding high-speed railways, nearly half of the world’s 100 tallest bridges and a motorway network to rival France’s.