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.
Ju et al. (2025) studied this question.