China’s Shenzhen is using big data to become a smart ‘socialist model city’
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About a month later, He Lifeng, the minister in charge of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, published an article in People’s Daily , the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, in which he said Shenzhen faced “unprecedented new tasks” which bore great significance for the rest of the country.
“Shenzhen is an international and innovative city. The problems encountered in the modernisation of our country are likely to appear in Shenzhen first,” the article said.
“We [China] will be the world’s first modern powerhouse not built on the road of capitalism, but by practising socialism with Chinese characteristics. The leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
Xie Maosong, a professor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said it was Shenzhen’s pioneering role that had made such a pilot experiment important.