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August 19, 2025Open Access

Shekou Industrial Zone as the Test-Tube for Chinese Urban Reform: Yuan Geng and Hong Kong's role

LJL. JuAndrews University HTHendrik TiebenChinese University of Hong Kong

Key Points

Socio-economic experiments at Shekou Industrial Zone influenced China's urban reform efforts, enhancing living standards.
Yuan Geng's initiatives in Shekou were inspired by Hong Kong's transformation during the late 1970s, indicating cross-border influences.
The analysis focuses on the Crystal Garden Community as a pivotal development, emphasizing its presentation to Xiaoping in 1984.
Hong Kong's spatial typologies and lifestyles contributed to meaningful changes in China's urban landscape, highlighting unique political dynamics.

Abstract

Shenzhen is famous as China’s urban laboratory and birthplace of world-leading digital technologies and electric vehicle companies. However, in 1979, a year before Shenzhen was launched, the nearby Shekou Industrial Zone was founded as the first ‘test-tube’ for reform. Yuan Geng of the China Merchants Group used Shekou for socio-economic and spatial experiments after visits to Hong Kong. Whereas the latter’s influence on Shenzhen and Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Open Door’ policy is widely acknowledged, Shekou in fact went further because the Hong Kong that Yuan studied in the late-1970s was undergoing significant transformation under Governor Murray MacLehose. The essay focuses on Crystal Garden Community, Shekou’s first major development, which Yuan presented personally to Xiaoping in 1984. Hong Kong not only offered new spatial typologies to China but also new lifestyles. MacLehose and Yuan operated in opposing political systems yet today their experiments have resulted in common benefits which are worth remembering.

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