Party City
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2006
1
107
131
Trip End
Ongoing
Shenzhen,
China
Monday, August 20, 2007
Shenzhen is undoubtedly an amazing place, but something doesn't tally and there is a recurring question in my mind, "Why is it here?":
Britain had already announced its intention (1984) to return Hong Kong to Mainland China before Shenzhen began to seriously grow, so the argument that Shenzhen was created to compete with Hong Kong doesn't seem to hold water. More recently, it was clear that after international money was pulled out of Hong Kong in the midst of the Asian Financial Crisis, it later came back into Shanghai and Guangzhou rather than Shenzhen, but still Shenzhen steamed ahead. If you don't believe that, look carefully around Shenzhen, and you'll notice that from a big business point of view it's not a place of international significance. Nonetheless, the city continues to boom, largely on the back of the activities of large Chinese companies.
Today, I heard a story that might just explain why Shenzhen is here:
To begin with, it is necessary to consider the development and the structure of the Chinese Communist Party since the founding of the modern Chinese Republic (sic Dynasty?) in 1949. The revolutionary leaders who survived Mao's various purges owed their positions to events long past. Since the opening up of the Chinese economy, government officials and their families have made money hand over fist as a result of their ability to leverage their power and influence. These officials and their families have also retained a tight police- and army- enforced control of the nation.
As the original revolutionary leaders grew older they feared losing control of the country and their families' wealth. With the imminent return of Hong Kong to the mainland, the Beijing authorities were also faced with the threat of the historically independent Cantonese in Guangzhou forging an alliance with their Hong Kong brethren in the rapidly expanding economy of Southern China. With Hong Kong's wealth coming online, and the threat of an alliance the Beijing Party risked both missing out on a cut of the economic cake, and also losing financial control of the economy to the non-Beijing Cantonese. The response was probably something that could only be countenanced in a country the size of China: develop a new city.
So it was that Shenzhen was born. It was built with Beijing money to be controlled by Beijing. The city occupies the strategic border crossing between Hong Kong and Mainland China and could effectively be used to control flows of traffic and commerce between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. This is not to say that there are not Cantonese and Cantonese money in Shenzhen, but it is a city whose growth is spurred on by vast numbers of migrants. In simple terms, Beijing got its finger in the Southern Chinese economic pie. Secondly, Shenzhen has provided a training ground to groom the younger generations of the families of the original revolutionary leaders in Beijing. Even in the Chinese Communist Party it is out of the question to parachute family members into provincial governorships. However, it is far more convenient to let younger members of the CCP Dynasty learn the ropes in a stellar, Beijing controlled city such as Shenzhen, before "promoting" them into important roles across China.
The result is that Shenzhen helps Beijing maintain economic control of the Cantonese and provides a mechanism for the powers that be to maintain control of the rest of China by feeding their favoured charges into the political system.
This is only a speculatory story, although I have been told it has been corroborated by various Communist Party members in Shenzhen, but it does make sense of a lot of unknowns...
