Villagers attend a rally in Longxian County, Shaanxi province in 1990.

Reuters

Over the past 30 years China has been through drastic changes, most notably the economic reforms of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which brought with them shiny high-rise buildings and industrial centres where farms, markets and fishing villages once stood.

Reuters photographers have been documenting this transformation over the decades.

A general view shows Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour in 1865.

Facing economic difficulties in the late 1970s, China’s leaders enacted extensive market reforms. State-owned enterprises were sold off and government administered land was handed off to the farmers working it, for a share of the profits paid back into the treasury.

But the changes go even further back than 30 years. Hong Kong was one of the first places in the country to see skyscrapers shoot up. The city’s Victoria Harbour, seen here in 1865, was originally called Hong Kong Harbour. When the British decided to house a naval fleet there they renamed it for Queen Victoria.

The pre-colonial fishing village is now Hong Kong's high-tech Central District where neon lit skyscraper house the movers and shakers of the city’s vibrant commercial and banking industries and where the centre of government and several consulates are also based.

People perform Arhat exercise, a form of traditional Chinese fitness, at a park in Beijing in 1988.

Locals dance during a morning exercise session at the Temple of Heaven park in Beijing.

Black-and-white TV sets are displayed at a department store in Xidan, one of the three traditional shopping streets, in Beijing in 1981.

Customers at an internet cafe in Hefei, Anhui province.

Residents hold tape recorders to record folk songs during a singing contest in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in 1988.

A man sings in a local karaoke club during a night out in Shanghai.

People push their bicycles across a railway track during rush hour in Shanghai in 1991.

Passengers crowd into a train inside a station of the Subway Line Number 1 in Beijing.

People offer sewing services at an open market in Quanzhou, Fujian province, in 1982.

A production line of a garment factory in Huaibei, Anhui province .

Drivers talk on a steam locomotive at the Yongdingmen railway station in Beijing in 1981.

A female construction worker watches a train pass on the new high-speed railway line between Shanghai and Hangzhou on the outskirts of Shanghai.