The Shenzhen Phenomenon

From Fishing Village to Global Knowledge City

Richard Hu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000205350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

The Shenzhen Phenomenon is a comprehensive and systematic study about how Shenzhen, the world's fastest growing city, has developed into an international metropolis from scratch within 40 years.

It unravels the decision and policy making, planning, design, and development processes that have enabled the city's rapid growth, and associated problems and paradoxes. It also reveals the politics and power that have propelled this experimental city to spearhead Deng Xiaoping's 'reform and opening-up' agenda, which has made the city and remade the nation. This book demystifies several long-held misperceptions through identifying Shenzhen's rise as an opportunity deriving from a crisis, as a product of both grassroots ingenuity and top vision, and as both a planned city and an unplanned city.

Produced on the 40th anniversary of Shenzhen, this timely volume not only offers a comprehensive and systematic chronicle of the city, but also opens a window to understand China's new city making and urbanisation. It will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners in the field of urban and Chinese studies, as well as urban planning and design.

1
AN INSTANT CITY

[Shenzhen] is a window: a window of technology, management, knowledge, and opening-up policies.

Deng Xiaoping, 24 February 1984

Introduction

Shenzhen is an instant city. It has grown from a vast rural area, along the border with Hong Kong, into an international metropolis in 40 years. Today, Shenzhen has surpassed Hong Kong in both population and gross domestic product (GDP). It has become a leading city in both national and international urban systems. This sort of rapidity in a city’s growth is rare in the modern world and in history; it has created a Shenzhen phenomenon. Shenzhen was first designed as a ‘window’ to open China and to access the world. Now it is a ‘window’ for the world to approach China, in particular to understand China’s city making and urbanisation. In this book, I open a ‘window’ to unpack ‘the Shenzhen phenomenon’.

The Shenzhen phenomenon has been constituted and reconstituted by a complex process of governance transformation, spatial transformation, economic transformation, social transformation, and environmental transformation. It has involved constructive and destructive forces and effects, and has created an urban ecosystem of actors and dynamics working in both contradiction and balance. Through these analytical angles, I comprehensively examine the contexts, factors, processes, outcomes, stakeholders, and winners and losers involved in the creation of the Shenzhen phenomenon. I critically reflect on and interpret them to shed light on this contemporary urban miracle and to demystify several long-held misperceptions about the city’s birth and growth. In doing so, I unravel the logic underlying the Shenzhen phenomenon. It has emerged as an opportunity deriving from crisis – both a national crisis and a local crisis; as an endogenous development for not only city making but also nation building; and as an experimental, pioneering effort to break a structural paradox, at the same time creating a new paradox.

The timing of this study on Shenzhen is crucial and critical. It is widely known that Deng Xiaoping orchestrated the genesis of Shenzhen and assured its subsequent development to spearhead his ‘reform and opening-up’ agenda. Deng’s agenda has been a transformative strategy to modernise the nation and to legitimise the Communist Party of China (CPC), which were both in crisis when Deng came into power in a post-Mao Zedong era. Deng succeeded in making Shenzhen, modernising China, and legitimising the CPC. China just celebrated the 40th anniversary of ‘reform and opening-up’ at the end of 2018; the year 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of formally designating Shenzhen as a special economic zone (SEZ). Both ‘reform and opening-up’ and the establishment of the SEZ were the earliest and most strategic steps in Shenzhen’s short history; they were also critical to launching China’s rise. Shenzhen’s growth and influence have far exceeded the boldest imaginings of its progenitors. It is surely time to investigate how ‘the Shenzhen phenomenon’ has been created, to contribute this understanding to the wealth of urban scholarship and practice, and to establish a dialogue with the international urban studies and planning community. However, as yet, ‘Shenzhen has not received the scholarly attention it deserves’ (Vogel, 2017, p. XIV). This book is a step towards filling this void, and is especially focused on informing an international readership about the Shenzhen phenomenon.

This introductory chapter sets the contextual, conceptual, and methodological scene for the book. It explains and defines ‘the Shenzhen phenomenon’ – this book’s central concern – in terms of the city’s instant rise, and the settings and factors that have enabled the speed and scale of its growth. This concept also goes further, exploring the association between the city making of Shenzhen and the nation building of China; that is, how Shenzhen has been expected to spearhead ‘reform and opening-up’, a national strategy that has made Shenzhen and remade China. This conceptualisation underpins an endogenous development perspective towards the Shenzhen phenomenon. Shenzhen’s genesis, first of all, derived from an endogenous drive to open China to the world, to grow its economy, and to enrich its people. This endogenous effort has been undertaken at a historical moment of accelerated globalisation and increased neoliberalism since the late twentieth century. In light of this perspective, this book employs an ‘inside-out’ approach to unpacking the Shenzhen phenomenon. It is largely based on analysis of ‘inside’ data and information, experiences, perceptions, stories, and reflections on the city’s development, which is then intersected with some ‘outside’ observations, for cross-fertilisation.

An instant city

The establishment of Shenzhen city – based in Bao’an County, Guangdong Province – as a ‘municipality’ in the Chinese administrative structure was approved by the State Council on 5 March 1979. In August 1980, a ‘special economic zone’ was formally designated in Shenzhen. At the same time, similar SEZs were established in Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong Province and Xiamen in Fujian Province. This political decision opened a new chapter not only in the city’s history, but also in the nation’s history. Before this, Shenzhen, which literally means ‘deep ditch’ in the local language and first appeared in historical documents in the year 1410, was not known to many outsiders. Not many people knew how to pronounce the uncommon Chinese character ‘圳’ for ‘Zhen’, and misread it as ‘川’ for ‘Chuan’, by pronouncing the right part of the character only. Now Shenzhen is a name of worldwide recognition and reputation.

Shenzhen’s predecessor, Bao’an County, was taken over on 16 October 1949 by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the civil war (1946–1949) between the communists and the nationalists. The county has a documented history dating back to the year 331, when the county, as a local level of government, was incorporated into the administrative system of the East Jin Dynasty (317–420). This is the earliest record of Shenzhen’s urban and administrative history. Located in the estuary of the Pearl River, the area was suitable for farming and fishing. We can assume that it was these geographical and economic features that have created the popular perception of Shenzhen having grown from a ‘fishing village’. Today Shenzhen is known as a migrant city, but this area has a long pre-modern history of migration. For hundreds of years the area has been a destination for migrants from elsewhere in China, either sent by the government or arriving voluntarily.

Although the popular notion of Shenzhen’s origin as a ‘fishing village’ is in many ways a misperception, I use the term in this book because it is such a widely recognised way of thinking about Shenzhen’s growth. While more metaphorical than actual, the term highlights the city’s development on non-urban, non-developed land, in stark contrast to its present status as an international metropolis. The name Shenzhen was also used for a small border town – in today’s urban centre of Luohu – established in 1931. But Shenzhen city, as we know it now, was first established and developed in a large rural area in Bao’an County, which was neither a village nor a town. However, the metaphorical use of ‘fishing village’ reflects the fact that Shenzhen has been made almost from scratch. Gary Hack, an emeritus professor of urban design at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, recalled his first experience in Shenzhen and the contrast with the city today:

Visiting the Shenzhen SEZ in 1983, as I did, it was impossible to imagine the city we see today. Then, the first industrial enterprises had just begun and a row of townhouses for expatriate managers lined a portion of the waterfront, hardly intruding on the fishing villages and agricultural plots that were its mainstay. The plans we were shown seemed like a dream, unlikely to ever become a reality. As planners, however, we had misjudged the forces that would be unleashed by Deng Xiaoping’s vision of opening up China to the world. There were no precedents for building a new economy and a city of 13 million people in 40 years.

(G. Hack, personal communication, 23 April 2020)

Located in Guangdong Province in south China, Shenzhen has a land area of 1,997.47 km². It borders Hong Kong to the south, and sits between the sea to the east and the Pearl River estuary to the west; this is a prime location for growing into a gateway city (Figure 1.1). As of 2017, Shenzhen had a permanent population of 12,528,300 (a registered population of 4,347,200 with local hukou, and a non-registered population of 8,181,100 without local hukou), with a population density of 6,234 persons per km² (SSB, 2018). The hukou system is a household registration system linking a resident’s rights and services with their household registration, and has been in place in China since 1958. The high proportion of non-registered residents (those without hukou) reflects Shenzhen’s status as a migrant city. In 2004, Shenzhen became the first Chinese city to have no rural population, reaching a nominal urbanisation rate of 100 per cent. One important implication of this rural-urban conversion is that all the land in Shenzhen is urban and thus is state-owned, including the previously rural land, which had been collectively owned by the peasants in the Chinese dual urban-rural land system. Chapter 3 examines this issue in detail. The constructed land area in Shenzhen has now reached 927.96 km² (SSB, 2018), nearly half of the city’s total land area.

It took only 40 years for Shenzhen to change from an obscure rural area to an international metropolis. The city’s growth has been phenomenal, whether measured by population, employment, or GDP (Figure 1.2). Here are the overall indicators of the city’s growth from 1979 to 2017 (SSB, 2018):

• Population grew 40-fold, at an average annual growth rate of 10.2 per cent.

• Employment grew 68-fold, at an average annual growth rate of 11.7 per cent.

• GDP grew 11,452-fold, at an average annual growth rate of 22.4 per cent.

Shenzhen has now become a leading city, domestically and internationally. In 2018, it ranked third in terms of total GDP among Chinese cities, after only Shanghai and Beijing (China Daily, 2019). However, when Shenzhen became a city 40 years ago, these other top cities were already China’s economic engines. They each boast a longer history of being China’s economic and political centres, a history stretching over hundreds of years. Shenzhen has caught up to them in just four decades through its faster rate of economic growth. Indeed, it could be seen, on some measures, as having surpassed them. Using a measure of ‘comprehensive economic competitiveness’, a study undertaken by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2018 found that Shenzhen ranked first among Chinese cities, ahead of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beijing (PROSG, 2019). Shenzhen has also started to appear in some international rankings of cities, although its performance is not as impressive as in those domestic rankings. In the latest 2018 ranking of world cities conducted by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network, Shenzhen was in the last place in the category of ‘Alpha- cities – very important world cities that link major economic regions and states into the world economy’; cities in the same category include Amsterdam, San Francisco, Barcelona, Munich, and Houston, all ahead of Shenzhen (GaWC, 2019). This indicator captures Shenzhen’s linkage with the world city network and its status as a strategic urban node in the integrated global economic system. It reasonably reflects Shenzhen’s status as an emerging global city.

FIGURE 1.1 An indicative map of the location of Shenzhen.

Notes
The dotted line indicates the boundary of the original ‘special economic zone’.

FIGURE 1.2 Shenzhen’s population, employment, and GDP, 1979–2017.

Data source: SSB (2018).

Indicators and rankings do not capture the entirety of a city’s development, which is a complex, dynamic, and fluid system and process. Shenzhen is more than what these measures, mostly in an economic sense, can illustrate. They are used only to benchmark the city’s growth and status, relative to other cities at home and overseas. However, what differentiates Shenzhen from other cities in China and the world is not just its status as an international metropolis, but the ‘instantness’ of achieving this status. This ‘instantness’ is scarcely paralleled by any other cities. Probably Dubai is the only counterpart city that might arguably deserve the title of ‘instant city’, through ambitious government-led investment and branding (Bagaeen, 2007). In a way, Dubai and Shenzhen are analogous since both have been ‘built at phenomenal speeds’ to win the reputation of an ‘instant city’ (Ouroussoff, 2008). However, these two cities differ greatly in terms of their local settings and city making processes – their single commonality is the ‘instantness’ of their creation. China is experiencing the most massive urbanisation movement in human history. But, of all Chinese cities, ‘instant city’ is a title used exclusively for Shenzhen, due to its rapidity in producing spaces not only in the physical sense, but also in economic, social, and political senses (Chen & de’Medici, 2010; Ouroussoff, 2013). Even though numerous new cities have sprouted, and almost all cities in China have multiplied in size in the past four decades, Shenzhen is the first, and arguably the only, standalone city that has been developed from scratch and has now become an international metropolis.

The Shenzhen phenomenon

Steven N. S. Cheung, a Hong Kong-based economist, has been an interested, passionate observer of, and commentator on, China’s economic reform and development since the early 1980s. As early as 1982, Cheung predicted that China would go capitalist, although it would not be a rapid transition (Cheung, 1982). On 20 April 2019, Cheung made a speech entitled ‘Is Shenzhen a Phenomenon?’ at a summit in Shenzhen on the future of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) – the global city region that also includes Hong Kong, Macau, and other cities in Guangdong Province – and Shenzhen (Cheung, 2019). In this speech, Cheung affirmed that Shenzhen is a phenomenon, and argued that it is sure to become an economic centre of the globe. Cheung made these comments from an economic perspective, based on his experiential observation of the transformation of Shenzhen, the GBA, and China in the past four decades. Indeed, as indicated in the previous section, Shenzhen’s economic growth is phenomenal. Shenzhen, along with the GBA in which it is located, is already a global economic centre in many ways. Cheung is fond of making predictions. He predicted 30 years ago that Shanghai would overtake Hong Kong, in an economic sense, and he proved to be right. This time he has further predicted that Shenzhen and its hinterland in Guangdong Province will someday surpass Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Whether Cheung’s prediction will prove true awaits the test of time, and depen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 An instant city
• 2 The chief architect
• 3 The planned and unplanned
• 4 The global knowledge city
• 5 The Shenzhen-Hong Kong dialectics
• 6 New cities ‘made in China’
• 7 The Dengist legacy in a ‘new era’
• Appendix 1: A timeline of Shenzhen, 1979–2020
• Appendix 2: A glossary of Chinese names and expressions
• Index