Why did Shenzhen become Shenzhen?
In 40 years, a small border town developed into a well-known international first-tier city at an astonishing speed. In 40 years, Shenzhen has created a miracle in the history of human development, and what it shows to China and the world is a magnificent picture of the times.
So in the 40 years of Shenzhen's development, what factors have promoted and supported Shenzhen's extraordinary development?
Data map: Drone performance above Shenzhen Talent Park in Nanshan District.
China News Agency reporter Chen Wenshe
There are many breathtaking places in Shenzhen, and the most intuitive is its surging GDP growth rate.
From 196 million in 1979 to 2.69 trillion in 2019, GDP has increased 12,000 times!
Just last year, Shenzhen's GDP surpassed Singapore and ranked 21st in the world, letting the world know what "Shenzhen Speed" is!
According to the calculation of per capita GDP, Shenzhen's per capita GDP has increased from 606 yuan in 1979 to 203,489 yuan in 2019. Even if it is placed in the four major domestic first-tier cities, Shenzhen's per capita GDP ranks first!
In 2019, Shenzhen’s GDP was 26,927.09 billion yuan, ranking second only to Shanghai and Beijing.
Its urban area is 1997 square kilometers, with an average GDP of 1.348 billion yuan, ranking first in the country. It is more than double that of Shanghai, which ranks second in GDP by 602 million yuan, and four times that of Guangzhou and Beijing. 6 times.
A recent study by the University of Tokyo in Japan shows that Shenzhen is currently one of the first-tier developed cities in Asia, has become an important international first-tier city, and plays an increasingly important role in global economic activities.
The gathering of elements depends on location, system, infrastructure, market efficiency, and the soft environment including culture, political and business harmony.
Among the four special economic zones identified in the first batch, Shenzhen’s endowment conditions are not necessarily the best, but after 40 years of hard work, Shenzhen is undoubtedly the most dazzling and attracting the world’s attention.
Shenzhen’s achievements today are undoubtedly the result of a combination of multiple factors.
So in the 40 years of Shenzhen’s development, what factors have been promoting and supporting Shenzhen’s extraordinary development?
Open genes
From the day the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone was established, openness was destined to become its genes.
Shenzhen is adjacent to Hong Kong, which has the highest degree of economic freedom in the world, and has to open up. The development of Shenzhen in the first two decades has largely benefited from the transfer of industries from Hong Kong and other advanced economies in Asia. "Let's make up for it" has played a positive role in promoting the economic development of the special zone.
According to statistics, in the first 20 years of reform and opening up, relying on this industrial model, Shenzhen’s annual GDP growth rate reached an average of 35%.
In this form of opening to the outside world, Shenzhen has gradually deepened its understanding and understanding of the requirements and changes of the external world, and has gradually strengthened its ability to adapt to external changes and challenges, and to align with advanced world standards, and then strive to compete in external competition. Taking the initiative has become the driving force for Shenzhen to work hard.
The 40-year development process of Shenzhen is essentially a process of continuous improvement of the connotation of openness.
From the early "three to one supplement" and extensively developed industrial parks to vigorously promote the transformation and upgrading of the industrial economy, and actively promote the high-end, integration, agglomeration, and intelligent development of strategic emerging industries, the functions of the park began to increase. The orientation adapts to the evolution of the development needs of new-generation information technology, biology, new energy and other emerging industries.
In 2013, the Shenzhen Municipal Government issued the "1+6 Document" in the form of "Document No. 1" to promote industrial transformation and upgrading. The transformation from general manufacturing to advanced manufacturing in Shenzhen’s secondary industry has accelerated, and the tax burden has gradually increased from 0.17 in 2012 It dropped to 0.14 in 2019, and advanced manufacturing industries represented by smart manufacturing and life and health industries are rapidly gathering. In 2019, related taxes climbed to 83.49 billion yuan, accounting for 71.5% of manufacturing taxes.
Among them, the biomedical industry realized tax revenue of 7.16 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.1%.
According to data, as of 2019, there are more than 7,000 industrial parks of various types in Shenzhen, and 75% of enterprises above designated size and 80% of industrial output value above designated size are derived from industrial parks.
From the perspective of industrial structure, Shenzhen's existing tertiary industry enterprises account for more than 89% of all enterprises, which has exceeded the level of many developed countries in the world.
At the same time, Shenzhen pays great attention to creating key open highlands.
As of the end of 2019, there were 74 headquarter companies in Qianhai, Shenzhen, a total of 359 investment companies in the world's top 500, and a total of 936 investment companies in mainland listed companies.
Dare to be the first
China’s first export processing zone, the first commercial housing complex, the first to implement the construction bidding system, the first foreign bank, the first foreign insurance company, the first stock, the first law firm, the first One to break the "big pot of rice", the first to cancel the voucher supply of grain and oil, the first theme park, the first joint-stock commercial bank, the first land auction, the first bonded industrial zone, the first joint-stock insurance company, and the first A foreign exchange adjustment center, the first stock exchange, the first cultural fair, the first China High-tech Fair, the first strategic emerging industry development plan, the first commercial system reform, the first Internet Bank, the first "Talent Day", the first to realize the pure electric bus... They were all born in Shenzhen.
In many service industries, Shenzhen has also set countless firsts in the industry: for example, banks set up the first personal Hong Kong dollar savings business in the system; handled the first mortgage loan business for individual employees to purchase houses; took the lead in opening commercial bill acceptance and discount business; Safe deposit box business fills the gap in domestic safe deposit box business; issued the first domestic loan for infrastructure...On July 27, 1980, a heavy rain flooded Shenzhen's Luohu area into Zeguo.
Wu Nansheng, then Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Secretary of the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee, and the engineers who were participating in the urban planning meeting calculated that Luohu developed 0.8 square kilometers and invested 90 yuan per square meter to develop the "five connections and one leveling" (water and electricity access It costs 70 million yuan for drainage and sewage discharge, land leveling).
Wu Nansheng felt that "skillful women can hardly cook without rice", so he approached Gu Mu, then Vice Premier of the State Council, and said that bread cannot be made without yeast, and asked if he could use state loans as "yeast".
Gu Mu immediately agreed, and asked about the purpose and method of repayment, and then helped to borrow 30 million yuan.
This 30 million yuan was provided by China Construction Bank.
Marketization
Since the day the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone was established, marketization has become the fundamental rule of Shenzhen's economic activities and has always been the eternal creed of Shenzhen's economic system reform.
Marketization is not only the fundamental basis for fair competition among enterprises, but also an important condition for improving the efficiency of market competition.
Only under the conditions of marketization can the survival of the fittest be realized in the competition of enterprises, and the soil conditions can be created for the continuous growth of enterprises.
Shenzhen's economic development is inseparable from the fair competition and integrated development of enterprises of various ownerships, and it is directly related to the extraordinary development of Shenzhen's private enterprises.
As of May 2019, the number of private economic and commercial entities has reached 3.143,497, accounting for 97.66% of the city's commercial entities.
Among them, there were 1,953,459 private enterprises, accounting for 96.29% of the total number of enterprises in the city; during the period 2012-2019, Shenzhen's private economic team grew rapidly, with the number of registered households ranking first in the country, with an average annual growth of 367,000.
And such as Huawei, Tencent, DJI, BYD, Evergrande, etc. all stand out among the private enterprises.
Private enterprises not only play an irreplaceable role in Shenzhen’s economic growth, but also play an extremely important role in Shenzhen’s innovation.
Innovation has always been an important source of continuous improvement of Shenzhen's competitiveness.
An environment suitable for living, business and entrepreneurship
Livable, business, and entrepreneurial are the basic conditions for any city to acquire talent elements.
The development process of Shenzhen is actually a process of large gathering of talents.
From an early border town with more than 30,000 people to a metropolis with a population of over 10 million, Shenzhen experienced a process of gathering talents from domestic to international.
Over the past few decades, Shenzhen has made every effort to build a diversified talent system and continues to increase the construction of high-level talent teams.
Shenzhen has accumulatively identified 14,900 high-level talents at home and abroad, with 15 mobile post-doctoral research stations, 115 workstations (substations), 46 full-time academicians, and more than 110,000 returned overseas talents.
At the same time, Shenzhen is the youngest city in the country, with an average age of only 32.5 years old.
The reason why Shenzhen can produce talent gathering effect is directly related to the livable, business and entrepreneurial environment in Shenzhen.
Shenzhen has a total of 921 parks and has four nature reserves. The per capita green area of parks is 16.45 square meters. The green coverage rate of the built-up areas in the city is 45.1%. Since the greenway construction started in 2010, the total length of Shenzhen has been about 2,448 kilometers. The average density of the greenway network reaches 1.2 km/km2, the greenway coverage density is the first in the province.
Shenzhen fully implements green building standards to create a high-quality "green building capital".
A total of 1,200 building projects in Shenzhen have been awarded the Green Building Evaluation Mark. The area of green buildings is 110 million square meters. The scale and density of green buildings are among the highest in the country, and it has been awarded the title of National Renewable Energy Building Application Demonstration City.
Shenzhen is building a high-quality green transportation system in an all-round way, creating an example of a powerful transportation city.
The scale of the rail transit network has entered the world's top ten, with a share rate of 56.5% of public transportation motorization, the first in the world to realize 100% purely electric buses, and the number of new energy vehicles promoted ranks among the top cities in the world.
Shenzhen has established a green and low-carbon circular development economic system and built a national low-carbon ecological demonstration city.
Energy consumption and water consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP have reached the national optimal level.
As the country's first carbon trading pilot city, the cumulative total trading volume of carbon emission market allowances is 57.05 million tons, with a total trading volume of 1.358 billion yuan, ranking among the top in the country.
Fully implement the strictest water resources management and build a sponge city that integrates "water governance and city governance".
The city has completed 1,361 sponge city projects, covering an area of 180 square kilometers, accounting for 19% of the built-up area.
Shenzhen fully implements compulsory classification of domestic waste, builds a "waste-free city" with high standards, has a waste recycling rate of over 30%, and waste incineration flue gas emission standards are better than EU standards.
Promoting the intelligentization of city management, 98% of administrative approval items are handled online, and 94% of administrative licensing items are "zero-run", ranking first in the country in the comprehensive ranking of smart city construction.
Shenzhen already has 8 subway lines (Line 10 is about to open), 4 modern high-speed railway stations, an international hub airport, eight major port areas...From Shenzhen, you can easily reach all parts of the world.
The most eye-catching of Shenzhen Metro Line 10 is the country's first cloud-computing rail transit line supported by technologies such as "cloud computing" and "big data".
The purchasing power of Shenzhen residents on Taobao at night is the largest in Guangdong, the activity of "Taobao Live Studio" is fourth in the country, and the night delivery volume of Shenzhen merchants is third in the country, and night food delivery accounts for over 1/4.
According to the calculation results of the "China Urban High-quality Development Report 2020" released in early August this year, Shenzhen ranks first in the country in the total score of high-quality development, followed by Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. In terms of indicators, Shenzhen won the overall score. Performance, coordinated development, and green development are three individual champions, leading the country.
Livable, suitable for business, suitable for entrepreneurship, this is also the fundamental condition for the formation of other factors agglomeration effect.
In the first half of this year, although Shenzhen's economy was inevitably impacted by the epidemic, the momentum for various factors to gather in Shenzhen did not decay.
As of May of this year, Shenzhen's total capital was 9288.1 billion yuan, which not only ranked first in terms of incremental growth, but also ranked among the top three in terms of growth rate.
Service-oriented government
As the saying goes, the market is an invisible hand, and the government is a tangible hand, but this hand of the Shenzhen government has always been a helper for enterprises, a helping hand, and a promoter of economic activities, and has never been a hand that intervenes in the development and operation of enterprises.
The focus of the government's work has been on improving infrastructure construction and business environment, guiding industrial development and improving the spatial layout of industrial development.
If Shenzhen’s opening up and development were carried out from the west to the south, then today’s Shenzhen’s opening up development has taken shape from west to east, from Nanshan to Pingshan, from south to north, and from Luohu to Longhua. Diverse pattern.
The author once talked with a district party secretary in Shenzhen about the issue of companies that are "unacceptable" in investing in certain places. The secretary bluntly said: Then we must consider changing the "water and soil".
In one sentence, we can see that the Shenzhen government's idea of serving enterprises comes first.
It is crucial for the government to play a mainstay role in major crisis management.
Shenzhen is a frontier city in China’s opening to the outside world, with many ports. However, in dealing with the unprecedented impact of the epidemic this year, the government has always demonstrated systematic and unhurried control capabilities. It is in a very large city with extremely high population mobility and a large population. There have been no cluster outbreaks.
At the same time, the government has made forward-looking deployment and guidance for the normalization of epidemic prevention and control in various industries to resume work, production, and business, and make full use of existing advantages in the production of pharmaceutical products, facilities, and equipment. China and even the world have played an irreplaceable role in the supply of anti-epidemic drugs and products.
Recently, the Shenzhen Bureau of Statistics released economic data for the first half of the year. The total GDP reached 1,263,430 million yuan, achieving a positive growth of 0.1%.
Faced with the dual impact of the epidemic and changes in the international situation, Shenzhen’s economy has shown strong vitality and resilience. From minus 6.6% in the first quarter to plus 0.1% in the first half of the year, it achieved a shocking “reversal”.
Since the beginning of this year, Shenzhen has successively introduced a combination of policies such as "16 Measures to Benefit Enterprises", "66 Measures to Stabilize Growth", and "Ten Billion Stable Growth Actions" to help enterprises resume work and production, and increase production.
The just announced economic data for the first half of the year showed that Shenzhen's economy has stabilized and improved.
The city's total profits of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 22.2% year-on-year. Not only did the growth rate turn from negative to positive, but the growth rate increased significantly by 47.2 percentage points over the first quarter.
Shenzhen's electronic information industry chain is complete, with a high degree of marketization, and local enterprises have obvious technological advantages. The total industrial output value accounts for about 1/6 of the country.
Since the beginning of this year, in the face of the impact of the epidemic, Shenzhen electronic information companies have shown good market resilience. Especially, taking advantage of the central government’s acceleration of the deployment of "new infrastructure", Shenzhen has taken the lead in 5G and other fields to accelerate the pace of 5G commercial construction. Citywide coverage of 5G network will be achieved in August.
According to customs statistics, in the first half of 2020, Shenzhen's imports and exports to countries and regions along the “Belt and Road” route amounted to 301.56 billion yuan, an increase of 5.5% over the same period last year.
In the first half of the first half of the year, Shenzhen’s exports of products along the “Belt and Road”, electromechanical products accounted for more than 70%, reaching 112.62 billion yuan, of which automatic data processing equipment such as computers and their parts and components were 10.95 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.8%.
Excellent top-level design
As a test field for reform, Shenzhen was considered to be shouldering the historical mission of exploring reforms from the very beginning.
However, Shenzhen's reform and opening up were not smooth.
At every critical moment concerning the future and destiny of Shenzhen, the central government has given care and entrustment. Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of reform and opening up, visited Shenzhen twice to supervise the war. Comrade Deng Xiaoping came to Shenzhen for inspection for the first time in 1984. He was very satisfied. After the inspection, he wrote an inscription: "Shenzhen’s development and experience have proved that our policy of establishing special economic zones is correct." He fully affirmed the achievements of Shenzhen’s reforms, and at the same time encouraged Shenzhen to continue to take the road of innovation and reform. road.
In the spring of 1992, the old man made a famous "Southern Talk" during his inspection in the south, clearly pointing out that the special zone was surnamed a society and not a capitalist, and resolved the long-standing doubts about the nature of socialism that have plagued people.
After the inspection, he left Shenzhen. He took the city leader's hand and said goodbye, repeatedly exhorting: "You have to do it faster." So there was a "Shenzhen speed" that shocked the world.
It can be said that without Deng Xiaoping's foresight, without Deng Xiaoping's affirmation and guidance, Shenzhen today may be another situation.
Today, the highest level in China has put forward goals and requirements of world significance for the future development of Shenzhen. The Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Supporting Shenzhen’s Construction of a Pilot Demonstration Zone for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics issued in August 2019 requires Shenzhen to become A global benchmark city with outstanding competitiveness, innovation, and influence requires that by the middle of this century, Shenzhen should establish a global city benchmark in five major aspects: innovation and development, urban civilization, government under the rule of law, people's livelihood, and ecological environment.
Shenzhen is young, but it has a glorious and great mission in the future of China's reform and opening up. It is a long way to go.
Shenzhen has created a miracle in China in the past 40 years, and the next 40 years will require Shenzhen to create a miracle in the world. Now it cannot be said that Shenzhen is perfect, let alone that the future of Shenzhen will be smooth. It can only be said that Shenzhen is far from being developed. In the poor period, reform is far from a poor period, opening-up is far from a poor period, innovation is far from a poor period, there is no end in terms of complementing each other, self-improvement, and deepening integration with the world.
In the middle of this century, Shenzhen needs to strive not only to look like a socialist pilot demonstration zone, but also to forge the soul and essence of socialist pilot demonstration zone.
Shenzhen entrusts the hope of the country and the nation, and hopes that Shenzhen can once again create miracles that the world admires!
"China Economic Weekly" special writer Guan Huanfei