From a nondescript fishing village like Haldia in Bengal in the early 1980s, this part of Guangdong in South China took market forces in its stride for the last 20 years to emerge as what Shenzhen is today, a hub of global players in electronics and telecommunications.
Spread over 396 sq km on the banks of South China Sea overlooking Hong Kong, Shenzhen is among the four special economic zones China set up way back in 1979 to keep pace with the changing world order. Twenty-eight years down the line, Shenzhen matches the infrastructure that Hong Kong inherited. Far from "eating from the common pot", a slogan of the communes prevalent in China in the 1960s, global brands from McDonald's to KFC, Sony to Motorola, discs and theatres dot this SEZ well connected with flyovers, road and rail. Its remarkable growth coupled with the huge spending in infrastructure provokes one to take a re-look at the debate over special economic zones nearer home. While partners of the ruling Left and the Opposition in West Bengal continue to strut and fret over the compensation on offer for land losers, they tend to brush aside a whole lot of issues from infrastructure to the choice of industries and environment. China has made its priorities clear. It has opened up the coastal areas to high-tech industry and the service sector. Along with it, it has drawn up "red category" zones across rural lands banning industries and urbanisation to ensure grain security. Vice premier Zeng Peiyan said the central government would be pumping in more money to help people migrate to the industrial areas from rural areas where industrialisation is forbidden. This is part of the sustainable development policy coming up for scrutiny in the 17th Chinese Communist Party National Congress this month. Unlike in Nandigram where villagers at large are reluctant to part with their little holdings, the young Chinese are on the move. Among the 10 million population in Shenzhen, migrants comprise the majority with six million temporary residents. While the talented and upwardly mobile in India aspire to immigrate to the US, the young in China want the country to become US one day, despite the disagreements between the two countries at government level.
