A City’s Legend How Shenzhen evolved from a fishing village into a pioneering metropolis volving from a fishing village, Shenzhen, in est place in Shenzhen to Hong Kong, was set up who now works as a volunteer in the village. As the south China’s Guangdong Province, is now as a trailblazer in the city. “walking history book” of the village, he loves to Eone of China’s megacities. It has been the In 1979, with the preferential policies of the share his story with visitors. “Without reform and country’s fastest growing economy over the past Shenzhen SEZ, people in Yumin Village organized opening up, it is hard to say what my life would be four decades. transportation teams of freight ships and opened like now,” he added. Shenzhen was set up as a city in January 1979, for business. Some entrepreneurs from Hong right after China adopted its reform and opening- Kong started renting houses in the village and Pioneering spirit up policy in December of the previous year. In converting them into factories. The rent went The development of the Shekou Industrial Zone 1980, it was upgraded to a Special Economic Zone straight into the villagers’ pockets. is another microcosm of the rapid growth of (SEZ) along with three other coastal cities in south In 1981, it built villa-style apartments for vil- Shenzhen. The industrial zone took the lead in China, with the aim of making it a pioneer in ex- lagers—luxurious for Chinese people at that time. breaking many shackles and tried every possible ploring ways to carry out reform and opening up. It quickly became the wealthiest village in China, way to develop its economy. placing it in the spotlight ever since. “Every step the pioneers took in the reform Huge transformation In 1992, it set up a stock company with every and opening-up process was full of risks,” said Liu When Wu Jinqing arrived at the Shenzhen River in villager as a stockholder, making it the first vil- Wei, Deputy General Manager of China Merchants a rowing boat with his parents in the 1940s, it was lage stock company in China. In 2001, the village Shekou Industrial Zone Holdings Co. Ltd. a desolate place with few residents along the river. demolished old buildings and constructed new In the Shekou Museum of Reform and In the 1950s, with the support of the local gov- residential compounds, 90 percent of which were Opening up, launched in December 2017, there ernment, many fishing families who had lived on used for renting, whose proceeds went directly to are two exhibition halls. One is about the history the river were moved up to the bank and settled the villagers. A property management office was of the Shekou Industrial Zone, while the other is down. set up to manage the rental apartments. about Yuan Geng, dubbed the “father of Shekou.” After Shenzhen became an SEZ, Yumin “Life now is far beyond what I could have “Yuan is a legendary figure,” Liu said. “He was Village, because of its unique location as the clos- imagined when I was young,” said 80-year-old Wu, a fearless explorer and played a key role in estab- The Qianhai bay area in Shenzhen, south China’s Guangdong Province, on July 31, 2017 XINHUA NO. 20 2017.indd 100 18-6-25 上午11:33 lishing the Shekou Industrial Zone.” took 10 days.” This has made Shekou a magnet worth of fi nancing. By 2017, they started helping At the age of 61, Yuan was dispatched to for business starters. China’s brand to go abroad with their international south China to do research on possible develop- By 1992, Shekou had become an industrial networks. ment plans in 1975. After thorough investigations, kingdom worth over 20 billion yuan ($3.13 billion), Statistics show that the total added value by Yuan concluded that to develop the economy, and per-capita GDP had climbed to 32,000 yuan firms registered reached 203 billion yuan ($31.8 foreign investment had to be injected into China’s ($5,000), on a par with the Four Asian Tigers at that billion) in 2017, with a year-on-year increase of economy. His proposal got a go-ahead from the time. over 40 percent. As of the end of March, the zone Central Government. had had a total of 168,600 registered companies, Yuan chose a piece of undeveloped land in Greener pastures or an average of 88 new enterprises per day. west Shenzhen, which covered over 12 square km Some 30 years after Shekou took the lead in re- Dapeng New District, on the other hand, has and bordered the New Territories in Hong Kong, form, Qianhai, a neighboring area, took the baton a different goal from Qianhai’s big CBD objec- for an industrial district. He helped build it from to expand and deepen reform. tive. It aims for a milder and greener image as scratch to attract overseas investment, aiming to On April 27, 2015, the Qianhai-Shekou Free the city shifts from high-speed to high-quality fuse the advantages of cheap land and labor from Trade Zone was set up. Spanning 15 square km development with more focus on environmental the mainland with Hong Kong’s funds and tech- of newly reclaimed land on the western edge of preservation. nology. Shenzhen, Qianhai is slated to become a large With an area of 294 square km and a coastline On July 2, 1979, the groundbreaking explosion Central Business District (CBD) with a cluster of of 133 km, Dapeng New District is rich in marine demolishing the hills in Shekou became known as high-end offi ces, hotels, apartments and civic in- resources and is a destination for diving enthusi- the “fi rst explosion of reform and opening up.” It stitutions when its development is completed by asts. This is the only area in Shenzhen that is not made way for land construction to begin. Shekou, approximately 2020. evaluated by its GDP. In the 1990s, companies with intensified the test tube of the project, set out on a new ex- “Yuan Geng explored a new pattern for re- energy consumption and pollution emissions perimental road. form,” said Zheng Hongjie, Director of the Qianhai populated the area. To restore the ecological en- As the leader in the reform campaign, Yuan Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry vironment, 184 such companies were shut down. conducted a series of bold experiments in the Cooperation Zone Administration. “Now we will Ninety-seven companies renowned for research industrial zone and made 24 institutional reforms, explore new systems and institutions for future de- in biomedicine, gene technology and marine or- including distributing wages and housing based on velopment.” Institutional reform is the major focus. ganisms were set up, including the China National performance and merit, rather than according to By June 2012, the State Council had approved 22 Genebank, the largest genebank in the world. offi cial rank, a method that was commonly used in policies for Qianhai that were even more preferen- The government is not alone in ecological state-owned enterprises in China at that time. tial than those for Shenzhen. protection. Dive4Love, a non-governmental orga- Overcoming a variety of difficulties, Yuan “It is an SEZ within the Shenzhen SEZ, which nization (NGO) initiated by a few diving fans, aims established the China Merchants Bank, China’s is very innovative in terms of policy, technology to protect the sea’s coral. first joint-stock commercial bank, and Ping An and financial services,” said Wang Jinxia, Deputy The organization, now with more than 1,600 Director of the Qianhai Management Bureau. Insurance, the nation’s fi rst joint-stock insurer. He registered volunteers, set up classes on marine Legal innovation and financial reform have also engineered the revival of the state-owned ecology in every primary school, middle school become the key to the zone’s international recog- China Merchants Group, a conglomerate founded and high school in the Dapeng New District. nition, and it has attracted companies from home in 1872. By December 2017, the group had cleaned up and abroad. Hong Kong laws can be applied to set- In 1982, there were more than 100 com- 115,000 square meters of ocean and collected panies settled in Shekou. Many shopping malls tle economic disputes in Qianhai, which has been over 200 kg of marine debris. started to spring up, with the fi rst bonded area and highly appreciated by Hong Kong enterprises. There are 112 volunteer organizations in the fi rst duty-free shop in China all emerging. The Qianhai zone has also offered pref- Dapeng New District, including the largest coral “Shekou is very efficient,” Lin Xiaojing, who erential tax policies to overseas talent since conservation team in the country. The volunteers has been living there for almost 50 years, said. “If a 2013. Foreign professionals only have to pay a in the district are from many countries including person wanted to set up a company, the applica- 15-percent personal income tax rate, while in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. tion process was normally three months in other other areas on the mainland, the amount is 45 “We believe that with regions of the mainland. But in Shekou, it only percent. In addition, it only takes three work the collective efforts of days to register a company in Qianhai, with an various parties, Dapeng and average of seven companies from Hong Kong Shenzhen at large can be settling in Qianhai on a daily basis. greener and prettier,” said Chen Sheng, a Hong Kong local, started his Shen Xiaoming, one of the company in Qianhai in 2015, as one of the first founders of Dive4Love.