South China boom town agonizes over its future
2002-11-09

Category Urban Nations China States Guangdong People Jiang Zemin Zhu Rongji Event 2002 CCP 16th Congress

BEIJING - Shenzhen, once held up as an urban model and a paragon of China's economic miracle, is now agonizing over how to reinvent itself.

"After years of breakneck growth, our city is now backward, full of basic problems and issues. We have to revamp our city," city party boss Huang Liman said in a frank, no-nonsense speech on the fringes of the Communist Party congress on Saturday.

Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, was one of the first special economic zones set up when China began reforms two decades ago, invested with liberal business environments.

Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping used a visit to Shenzhen in 1992 to kickstart stalled reforms and send a message to hardliners that China's opening up to the West would not be reversed.

Now, with China gradually relaxing investment controls after joining the World Trade Organisation, Huang fears her city may lose its edge.

Haphazard city planning, pollution and traffic congestion, a dearth of high-tech industries and a lumbering bureaucracy could stymie its future, she told a couple of dozen officials and reporters.

Premier Zhu Rongji visited the region earlier this year and, apparently unhappy with what he saw, chastised the city government for not being bold enough in instituting change and reform, one journalist quoted local officials as saying.

COPYING NEIGHBOURS

The once-proud metropolis, an industrial city built from a fishing village on the banks of the Pearl River in south China's Guangdong province, has even been reduced to sending fact-finding teams to gawk at recent successes such as Shanghai.

"Zhu Rongji asked us to create wealth, to raise the city to a new standard," Huang said. "We're now seriously studying the next stage of growth, that's why we arranged a delegation to Shanghai and Suzhou to study the monumental changes in their economy."

That mission is taking on special urgency after President Jiang Zemin made a point of highlighting the zones -- Shenzhen, Xiamen, Shantou, Zhuhai and Hainan -- with Shanghai, China's financial and commercial hub, in his report to the congress.

While Huang was short on specifics, she identified a few key areas that the city's officials would focus on.

It put up for sale minority stakes in five major state utilities in August, hoping to attract foreign investment in more of its homegrown utilities industries.

On Saturday, Huang said the city was planning to groom telecoms gearmaker Huawei Technologies to take on overseas markets.

Shenzhen-based Huawei is a well-known name and considered one of China's leading telecommunication companies.

"Our high-tech industry is still not diversified enough. Electronics has been its sole pillar," she said. "We have to develop new industries: new materials, new energy, biotechnology, offshore industries, and find new sources of growth."

The city also plans to cooperate with Hong Kong on tourism, hoping to attract more of its deep-pocketed citizens.

And Huang assured her audience that city planners were not afraid to spend money to beautify the city.

"We need a better living environment to attract investors," she said. Reuters