ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the early triggering factors and decisions, debates and contestations, and actions taken to build Shenzhen as a new city. Shenzhen arose as an opportunity after a crisis. After the death of Mao Zedong and the resultant end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China was nearly bankrupt, and the Communist Party of China faced a crisis of political legitimacy. Deng Xiaoping, a pragmatic reformist, initiated his ‘reform and opening-up’ agenda to modernise the nation as well as to rebuild the political legitimacy of the Party. The highest priority on the agenda was economic growth, for which Shenzhen was designated as one of the special economic zones (SEZs) in 1980. However, for over a decade, Shenzhen SEZ’s progress did not proceed smoothly, directly affected by mainstream ideological debates and political struggles between the reformists, led by Deng Xiaoping, and the conservatives of the communist orthodoxy. Deng Xiaoping triumphed in the end, through his authority, vision, cunning, and risk taking. Shenzhen is a symbol of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘reform and opening-up’; it is a socialist experiment with capitalism, aimed at growing the economy and building up the nation. Deng Xiaoping is dubbed as the ‘chief architect’ of China’s ‘reform and opening-up’. Indeed, he is also the ‘chief architect’ of Shenzhen.
