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Sleepy village which became guinea pig for reform
Fri Dec 12, 2008 2:19am EST
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By James Pomfret
SHENZHEN (Reuters) - Every day a stream of people climb a winding path to the peak of Shenzhen's Lotus Hill where a huge bronze statue of Deng Xiaoping surveys the frenzied economic boomtown he helped create out of nothing almost 30 years ago.
"China's strides toward prosperity belong in some part to Deng Xiaoping," said Guo Xiao, a 24-year-old migrant worker from Henan province who snapped photos of his girlfriend posing beneath the patriarch of China's economic opening.
"When we look at him, we think of Shenzhen's development. He is a great Chinese man," added Guo, as groups of schoolchildren and a delegation from far-flung Tibet milled about and laid wreaths at the feet of the stylized Communist Party memorial.
The Communist Party leadership's decision to make Shenzhen a "special economic zone" in 1980 to drive forward reforms is seen as one of the catalysts in China's transformation from a centrally planned to an increasingly market-driven economy.
"Shenzhen led the way and everyone wanted to emulate Shenzhen's success ... It was a flag bearer while at the same time perhaps a guinea pig, and it was able to harness capital and talent across the country," said Ben Simpfendorfer, an economist and China specialist with Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong.
But with the 30th anniversary of China's "reform and opening up" this December colliding with the global economic downturn, Shenzhen's future is again clouded. China's leaders have said growth must no longer yoke itself to cheap exports, leaving many to wonder where next for the economy and where next for Shenzhen.
Now a bustling metropolis of 8.6 million, crammed with ports, skyscrapers, top global manufacturers and its own stock exchange, back in 1980 Shenzhen was no more than a bucolic backwater of 30,000 villagers living off paddy fields and the sea.
"There were only two or three roads then, it was a poor, backward far-flung small village," said Xu Zongheng, Shenzhen's mayor in a recent speech.
HONG KONG LINKS
Small factories began mushrooming in southern Guangdong province in the late 1970s. Then, under the rehabilitated Deng who outmaneuvered political and ideological foes, four "special economic zones" were set up along China's southern coast -- Shenzhen, Shantou and Zhuhai in Guangdong and Xiamen in neighboring Fujian province.
"Perhaps its (Shenzhen's) greatest advantage is it had no baggage, it didn't exist, it could make itself into anything it wanted to be," said Simpfendorfer.
Shenzhen's position next to the then British-ruled capitalist haven of Hong Kong provided vital early infusions of foreign capital, business expertise and a window to the world.
The Pearl River Delta hinterland in Guangdong, which gave rise to much of the Chinese diaspora, also saw many wealthy overseas Chinese emigres return to invest.
Before Shenzhen got its start, a village at the tip of a rugged peninsula a little further along the coast called Shekou, or "Snake Mouth," became the site of China's first industrial zone or "reform test tube."
Shekou's mercurial founder, Yuan Geng, embraced a daring, near iconoclastic spirit of change in the area with little more than a wild beach with a few metal huts, recruiting a clutch of the country's top minds to pioneer reform with Party blessing. Continued...
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