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City Beat | Hong Kong cannot afford to say ‘I don’t mind’ to being overtaken by Shenzhen, President Xi’s ‘miracle’ city
- Carrie Lam’s indifference, even if diplomatic, to Shenzhen surpassing Hong Kong economically goes down badly in proud city
- Hong Kong failed to capitalise on competitive edge offered by ‘one country, two systems’, and may have to claw its way back with blood, sweat and tears
Reading Time:3 minutes
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“We should build several Hong Kongs on the mainland,” the late Deng Xiaoping once said.
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That was when China’s paramount leader and architect of the country’s opening up visited Shenzhen, then a backward fishing village in the early 1980s, and looked across the border at a prosperous Hong Kong under British rule.
Shenzhen and three other cities had been designated as China’s first batch of special economic zones by then, but few, including Deng himself, knew how to go about it.
Deng’s message to Shenzhen was that he had no money to offer, only special policies which the city would have to make the most of and forge its own path with blood, sweat and tears.
The rest is history.
Four decades later, Chinese President Xi Jinping was in Shenzhen last week to celebrate its 40th birthday as a special economic zone, and there was no mention of building “more Hong Kongs”.
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Instead, Xi called for “another miracle” from Shenzhen by outlining six new missions for its next stage of development, empowering it to be an “important engine” for the Greater Bay Area and to come up with new experiences that could be “replicated” in other parts of the country.
From first copying Hong Kong to now promoting the Shenzhen model, is it a historical inevitability, a change of mind by Beijing leadership, or a combination of both?
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