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SZ to offer more experience and wisdom

Writer: Wu Guangqiang  | Editor: Jane Chen  | From:  | Updated: 2018-06-04

Email of the writer: jw368@163.com

This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s groundbreaking reform and opening up. The four decades of unremitting efforts in reform and opening up has not only completely transformed China, once one of the world’s poorest nations, into the world’s second-largest economy, but has also contributed great momentum to the global economy.

From Dec. 18 to 22, 1978, the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of CPC was held in Beijing, marking the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy.

Over the past 40 years, China has achieved an average of 9.5 percent in annual growth rates in GDP in comparable prices. Its foreign trade has also registered an annual growth of 14.5 percent in the U.S. dollar.

“China’s reform and opening up meets its people’s aspiration for development, innovation and a better life. It also meets the global trend toward development, cooperation and peace,” President Xi Jinping said at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in April.

China’s success story comprises of many fabulous episodes, but one of the most splendid chapters is presented with Shenzhen Miracle.

Recently, a series of news reports and feature articles on Shenzhen’s brilliant achievements in reform, opening up and innovation have appeared on China’s major official media outlets including the People’s Daily, Xinhua and CCTV, sparking wide interest in Shenzhen as well as the rest of the country.

Once a small town of about 30,000 people on the route of the Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, Shenzhen began its legend as an overnight city in 1979 when it was promoted to city status and in 1980 when it was designated China’s first special economic zone (SEZ).

The world has never witnessed such a spectacular feat as Shenzhen’s meteoric growth within such a short period of time. In 2017, Shenzhen’s economic output hit 2.24 trillion yuan (US$338 billion), 11,000 times that of 1979. The city is poised to become a leading economic engine in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Today, Shenzhen has evolved from an economy characterized by assembly industry and low-tech manufacturing to a high-tech powerhouse and innovation hub. Home to many internationally successful companies, including Huawei, Tencent, BYD, ZTE, DJI, and BGI, Shenzhen is becoming a huge magnetic field that lure tens of thousands of talents and high-tech businesses from around the country and abroad.

What are the secrets behind Shenzhen’s inexhaustible momentum for growth and innovation?

The biggest secret is Shenzhen’s brave exploration of uncharted territories in administrative, economic and social renovation. Shenzhen has been a pathfinder in the reform of institutional systems and mechanisms, never ceasing to slash or reform institutions, regulations and practices that hamper the formation and progress of its market economy and stifle innovation in order to create a paradise for any aspiring business or entrepreneur, however insignificant or fledgling they may be.

That’s how thousands of “ugly ducklings” became “elegant swans.” Tencent, one of the leading Chinese multinational investment holding conglomerates, was born in a tiny office with a few computers in November 1998 by five young dream-chasers including Ma Huateng (aka Pony Ma). Swimming in the unbounded sea of Shenzhen, in a mere 20 years, the tiny fish has grown into a giant whale.

Wang Tao (aka Frank Wang), who has had a fervent passion for flight since his childhood, eventually made his dream come true beyond his imagination. Though he founded his drone-development company in 2006 from his dorm room at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, it is Shenzhen where he created the world’s largest drone company that now manufactures 70 percent of civilian drones in the world.

Now that China is at a new historical juncture when further economic and social development requires new momentum, the nation is placing higher expectations on Shenzhen, hoping it will create new “Shenzhen Speed” and “Shenzhen Quality.”

Shenzhen will strive to conduct more reforms to break new ground in such fields as jurisdiction, education and ecology and then offer its successful experience to the rest of China.

(The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)