With the highest roof on earth, the sleek Shanghai World Finance Center stands in the city that has overtaken New York and Chicago as skyscraper capital of the world. Setting the standard for a new generation of super tall skyscrapers, this Japanese-developed tower, built on Chinese land, also symbolises a new era in relations between the two previously hostile countries after Japan's violent invasion of China in the 1930s. This troubled history meant that every step of the skyscraper's symbolism and design had to be handled with immense sensitivity - but that didn't stop anti-Japanese sentiment threatening its completion
