Learning from Shenzhen: China's Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Model City

摘要

Shenzhen is a well-known city among the Chinese, although it is not a city with thousands of years of history nor the seat of a provincial government. It is, however, one of the four commonly accepted tier-one cities in China, ranked only after Beijing and Shanghai. The city of Shenzhen and the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) were established in 1979 and 1980 respectively as test grounds for the reform and opening policy, which was much debated by the new generation of post-Mao Chinese leaders at the time. Compared to the otherthree SEZs established in China at the same time, the Shenzhen SEZ was unique because of its geographic and political position: it was the gateway to Hong Kong, which was under Britain's sovereignty until 1997. In the following decades, Shenzhen's population boomed from thirty thousand to overten million in less than thirty years. Meanwhile, the city has achieved unprecedented economic growth; its GDP reached 2.2 trillion yuan ($338 billion dollars) in 2017, which was comparable to that of Hong Kong ($341 billion dollars). In addition to economic development, Shenzhen also experienced profound sociocultural and spatial transformations.