The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City

Product Information

PF: You challenge the idea of Shenzhen as a ‘blank canvas’ where nothing much existed before. What was Shenzhen, before it was Shenzhen? From long-established agricultural, fishery, and sea-faring activities, to the industrial, commercial, and cultural enterprises of the past century, the existence of a productive population with deep connections to an extensive regional and international network absolutely impacted Shenzhen’s urbanisation into the city as we know it today.

Explores the blurry history of the city, beginning with its farmers and oyster fishermen… An important story for architects and planners everywhere facing the excitement as well as perils of rapid urbanization and industrialization.”— The Architect’s Newspaper The region’s long history cannot be discounted in any narrative of post-1979 Shenzhen, and any understanding of industrialization in the countryside must begin with an understanding of the countryside before industrialization. There isn't really an argumentative point to the book, besides describing this miracle of transformation. The author kind of highlights the role of individual actors, including of the mayor Liang Xiang and his role in encouraging long term investments in education, schools, and hospitals. She also sort of takes a stance on the urban villages within Shenzhen such as Baishizhou, talking about how important they, and the illegal peasant housing built within them, were to the development and growth of the city as a whole, but there really aren't any strong claims made. Which makes sense because the title is just "The story of China's instant city".

Once just a rural borderland, today Shenzhen is a city of twenty million and a technology hub

Is it true that Shenzhen has no meaningful history? That the city was planned on a tabula rasa? Where the rural past has had no significant impact on the urban present? This book unravels the myth of Shenzhen, showing how the success of this modern “miracle” depended as much on its indigenous farmers and migrant workers as on central policy makers. Drawing on a range of cultural, social, political and economic perspectives, the book uncovers a surprising history—filled with ancient forts, oyster fields, urban villages, a secret informal housing system—and personal narratives of individual contributors to the city. The Shenzhen Experiment is an important story for all rapidly urbanizing and industrializing nations around the world seeking to replicate China’s economic success in the twenty-first century. The first section is "National Relevance" (how it relates to China as a whole), [9] with the first chapter chronicling Jiang Kairu. [10] The others are: "Regional History" (the development of the Pearl River Delta), "Urban Construction" (which includes conflict between the pro-development government and individuals who wish to retain their housing, or " nail houses"), and the section about " urban villages". [9]

The truth, it turns out, is a little more complex and a lot more interesting. In her latest book, The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City, Juan Du, an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, charts the city’s history alongside its recent boom. We learn that Shenzen’s pre-history is not just a curious sidenote swept away by the Reform and Opening Up policies of Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping.

Subscribe to the International Relations Updates by The Kootneeti

In stark contrast to conventional, flattened accounts of this vast Chinese city, Juan Du has given us an architect’s magical encounter with a place that we cannot quite see with our eyes, but can experience in fragments. I love this account of Shenzhen.”—Saskia Sassen, author of Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy Like all myths, Shenzhen’s has a relationship, albeit distant, with reality. However, the evolution of this city has been far less straightforward—and straightforwardly positive—than this founding mythology suggests.