China’s digital powerhouse Shenzhen stands at a crossroads, 40 years after its transformation

Name: How forty years of reform and opening up have transformed China
Uploaded: 2020-09-01T23:00:17.000Z
Duration: 2 min 45 s
Description: How forty years of reform and opening up have transformed China

Four decades after Deng Xiaoping gave his blessing to its development, some of the city’s modern challenges are familiar

Trade and technology tensions with the US and greater control from Beijing steer Shenzhen’s role as Greater Bay Area hub

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A hoarding in 2018 celebrating the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up in Deng Xiaoping Portrait Square, Shenzhen. Photo: Sam Tsang

William ZhengandGuo Rui

Published: 7:00am, 2 Sep 2020Updated: 7:19am, 2 Sep 2020

One of Grace Miao’s favourite weekend pastimes is a stroll through Lotus Hill Park in Shenzhen, on the central coast of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where a six-metre tall statue of former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping stands.

“I have told my two-year-old son about the statue and who he is,” said the 32-year-old working mother. “I tell him this is ‘Grandpa Deng’ who built this place from nothing to what it is today and we should thank him for his policies.”

Official commemorations of the creation, on August 26, 1980, of the Shenzhen special economic zone will take place late, tentatively on September 7, to fit in with President Xi Jinping’s schedule.

Four decades ago, as one of China’s reform pioneers, the unknown border town began its transformation into the country’s technology capital with 13 million local residents when Deng picked Shenzhen for his famous southern tour to give his grand reform experiment a much-needed push.

At the time, in the early 1990s, China’s reforms were facing strong headwinds, partly because of Western sanctions triggered by the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Deng’s pro-reform remarks during his Shenzhen trip were broadcast on the national news in March 1992 to become one of the pivotal moments in the country’s reform history.

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How forty years of reform and opening up have transformed China

Huang Donghe, a founder of the city’s most influential private think tank Interhoo, said Deng’s visit had reassured people about the direction and future of Shenzhen’s role as a testing ground for China’s groundbreaking reforms, with a mission to learn from successful Western economies.