Rags-to-Riches Tale of One City
The immense crowd, the technicolor buildings, the labyrinthine markets. No, we are not in Tokyo, we are in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in south China. This sprawling megalopolis is often touted as China’s Silicon Valley, but it offers far more than tech campuses and hipster joints.
In 1980, Shenzhen was transformed from mere farming and fishing communities in the Pearl River Delta into a special economic zone, one of four cities chosen by central authorities to undergo a pilot economic experiment.
Economic incentives allowed Shenzhen to boom at an unparalleled speed. Between 1979 and 2019, its GDP grew at an average annual rate of 28 percent to 2.69 trillion yuan ($409 billion). The city’s permanent population rose from 310,000 to more than 13 million, with migrants currently accounting for over 63 percent of the residents.
Innovation-led growth
Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping modeled Shenzhen to be closely interlinked to support Hong Kong’s economy. If Hong Kong was the
