Chapter 4 3. Gemini repositioning

Since the establishment of the "Special Zone" in 1980, Shenzhen has always been the "pioneer city" of China's reform and opening up. However, the political and economic miracles created in the early years have gradually become mediocre, just as cultural critic Zhu Dake worried: "The hurricane movement named after 'Shenzhen Speed' is gone forever. This cooled and downgraded city is facing a development maze similar to other cities. After losing the political advantage of 'Special Zone', Shenzhen can only turn to a single economy". So, where is the Shenzhen Road in its thirties?How is this testing ground for reform and opening up positioned in the new economic landscape?

Shenzhen, which once relied on Hong Kong's overseas investment and industrial entry, once again set its sights on the south in 2006. In July 2006, in the "Shenzhen 2030 Urban Development Strategy", it was clearly positioned as "an international city that develops together with Hong Kong" (Shenzhen and Hong Kong). In August 2007, the Bauhinia Research Center, which has significant policy influence in Hong Kong, also published the "Research Report on Constructing a Hong Kong-Shenzhen Metropolis". Hong Kong should join hands with Shenzhen to build a world-class "Hong Kong-Shenzhen Metropolis" with global competitiveness.

This almost national strategic decision-making has been realized by ordinary citizens. In 2007, when Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution" was released in Hong Kong, one-third of Hong Kong's box office was created by mainland residents, and Shenzhen fans contributed the most.It only takes a few simple steps to complete this journey of lust and caution: 20 yuan visa fee, 30 yuan transportation fee and 70 yuan movie ticket.Similarly, Shenzhen has also become the "back garden" for many Hong Kong citizens to buy a house and settle down, and shop for goods on weekends: from counterfeit handbags to fake jewelry, from books to vegetables, from saunas to dental fillings.Just like what often appears in TVB dramas, the old lady in Hong Kong pulls a shopping trolley and travels between Shenzhen and Hong Kong.Such convenience was difficult to achieve not so long ago, but now it is a breeze.Similarly, using Shenzhen as a transit to enter and exit Hong Kong has also become the choice of individuals holding L visas in all provinces and cities across the country except for areas where they can travel freely.Individuals and tour groups have more options to enter and exit Hong Kong from the initial Luohu Port to the current 7 ports including Futian Port, Huanggang Port, and Shenzhen Bay Port.Especially during the Christmas and midsummer discount seasons every year, shopping groups from the mainland to Hong Kong flock here.It is said that in the past, the shopping guides in the SASA cosmetics store only spoke Cantonese and English, but now, Mandarin is what they speak the most every day.

In addition to ports, the Hong Kong-Shenzhen cross-border section of the controversial Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link and the Hong Kong section will also be connected in 2014.By then, it will only take 16 minutes from Shenzhen to West Kowloon, Hong Kong, and from 100 minutes to 40 minutes from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. The one-hour and two-hour economic circle between Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta will no longer be a legend. These are just part of the package layout of Hong Kong and Shenzhen to jointly build a "Hong Kong-Shenzhen Metropolis". The larger blueprint is: 3,000 square kilometers, 20 million population, 2 trillion yuan of GDP, and 40 million airport throughput volume, port throughput of 40 million TEUs, etc.

The first step to realize this blueprint has already been taken. Shenzhen and Hong Kong are cooperating to build Shenzhen Qianhai into an "Oriental Manhattan".Qianhai is located in Nanshan District, northwest of Shekou in western Shenzhen. Most of it is reclamation land. The area covers a total area of ​​30 square kilometers, which is equivalent to the two Yau Tsim Mong districts in Hong Kong.The functional positioning of this area is: Shenzhen-Hong Kong Cooperation Pioneering Area, System and Mechanism Innovation Area, Modern Service Industry Cluster Area, and Structural Adjustment Leading Area.Focus on the development of six major areas: innovative finance, modern logistics, headquarters economy, technology and professional services, communications and media services, and business services.This comes from the analysis of Professor Feng Xiaoyun from the School of Economics of Jinan University, "An important part of the transformation and rise is the servitization of industrial structure, and the proportion of China's service industry in GDP is not only lower than the global average of 60%, but also The proportion of Shenzhen is lower than the average of developing countries, and the proportion of Shenzhen is also lower than 50%.” Therefore, the transformation of Shenzhen seems to be in response to the words of American scholar Schwey Sassen, “The global city is characterized by productive service-oriented city".

Qianhai Bay Bonded Port Area, as the early start-up area of ​​Qianhai area, focuses on the development of modern logistics and supply chain management service industries, and mainly attracts finance, insurance, shipping, trade, information and other related service industries to enter the area.Another pre-launch area, Qianhai Central Business District, will focus on the development of modern service industries such as innovative finance, accounting and legal services, financial information, technology services, communications and media services. "From the perspective of functional positioning and industrial development direction, Qianhai will develop a series of industries at the highest end of the industrial chain in the future, and its service scope will cover the entire Pearl River Delta including Hong Kong." said Xu Chongguang, deputy director of the Shenzhen Municipal Planning and Land Commission .

Guangzhou, another city of the Guangdong Gemini, is also facing the dilemma of urban transformation. After the release of the "2010 Blue Book of China's Urban Competitiveness: Report on China's Urban Competitiveness", we can't help but find that, according to the blue book's prediction, among the first-tier cities with the most potential in the next ten years, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing will become the most favored by experts city ​​of.Among the five central cities in the country, Guangzhou is the only one missing. Why did Guangzhou, which was once all-powerful, fall off the list?The analysis given by Dr. Ni Pengfei from the Institute of Finance and Trade of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is: Beijing was selected mainly because of the rise of China, and Beijing will surely become a world-renowned world city in the future; Shanghai, as the central city of the Yangtze River Delta, will also rise to become a world-class metropolis ; Tianjin was selected because of the development of Binhai New Area and the shift of China's economic center of gravity; while Chongqing was selected because it is the largest municipality directly under the central government in the west. "From our research point of view, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing are more representative. Now the comprehensive power of Guangzhou and Shenzhen is already very strong, and the base is already very large. Naturally, the growth rate cannot be compared with that of small and medium-sized cities. City ratio.” This point of view coincides with that of Xiao Jincheng, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission’s National Land Development and Regional Economic Research Institute. He believes that “cities with a large base, such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, have relatively limited room for growth.”

So, where is the way for Guangzhou?Compared with "Shanghai is the international financial center and international shipping center, and Beijing is the political center and cultural center of China", the "center" of Guangzhou has always been vacillating.Over the years, there have been no less than a dozen formulations of various strategic goals, including "the first good district" and "an international metropolis".Until 2010, after several changes in the city's positioning, Guangzhou's development goals were finally settled, and it officially proposed its own city characteristics - "international business center and international cultural center" and its own city positioning - "the best district".

Although the relationship between commerce and Guangzhou has always been close, it remains to be seen whether Guangzhou regards this as its core competitiveness.According to the Guangzhou government, the construction of Guangzhou as an international business center is based on five considerations: First, it has a long history of business and trade and cultural accumulation.Guangzhou is a commercial capital for thousands of years. It can be seen from the historical trajectory of the city's development over the past 2,000 years that the city of Guangzhou was born, developed and prospered because of commerce. Both domestically and internationally, Guangzhou's commerce and trade industry has a profound history. Influence.Guangzhou once prospered because of its foreign trade, especially during the Ming and Qing Dynasties when it was locked away from the country for a long time, and only Guangzhou was connected to the outside world.Guangzhou had the famous Thirteen Banks in the Qing Dynasty, and around 1850, it ranked fourth among the top ten urban economies in the world, mainly relying on commerce and trade.Second, commerce and trade is an important industry in Guangzhou.Guangzhou is currently the third largest economy in the country, with strong comprehensive economic strength and a complete industrial system, but the tertiary industry is particularly prominent, ranking second in the country, accounting for more than 60% of GDP, and the business industry has contributed a lot.Third, there is a good environment for the development of the business service industry.Guangzhou has unique location and transportation hub advantages.Located in the center of the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration, Guangzhou is also the economic center and regional center of South China. It has built high-standard airports, seaports, railway hubs, information ports, and international convention and exhibition centers. "Canton Fair" is known as China's No. 1 exhibition. It plays a pivotal role in China's foreign economic and trade development and is very influential in the world.Coupled with its location at the forefront of opening up and its proximity to Hong Kong and Macau, the maturity of Guangzhou's business environment ranks among the top in the country.In the list of the best commercial cities in mainland China released by Forbes in 2009, Guangzhou ranked second, second only to Shanghai.Fourth, it is supported by well-developed functional regional carriers.In the process of accelerating the transformation of the new round of economic development mode, Guangzhou optimizes and refines regional functions, adjusts regional industries in a timely manner, and vigorously develops modern service industries and headquarters economy in the central city.According to their respective foundations and conditions, the new districts have established a number of business and trade industrial parks, and correspondingly developed their respective advantageous industries for business and trade. The development potential of Guangzhou's business and trade industry is huge.Fifth, Guangzhou is backed by a strong Pearl River Delta manufacturing industry and urban agglomeration.The manufacturing industry in the Pearl River Delta is developed, which provides an important support for Guangzhou to build an international business center.In particular, the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government proposed to promote the integration of Guangzhou and Foshan into one city, and build the economic circle of Guangfo, Zhaozhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Huizhou, and the Pearl River Delta, so as to use the Pearl River Delta city division of labor for Guangzhou, give full play to its comparative advantages, take the path of high-end development, and vigorously develop The modern business service industry provides a good opportunity.This positioning is nothing more than trying to re-polish the golden signs of "Millennium Commercial Port" and "Foreign Trade Center" in the new era.

However, the "Cultural Center" has to make people wonder.In the context of Beijing's thousand-year-old cultural center, does Guangzhou have a cultural advantage?Although historically, Guangzhou was a place where Eastern and Western cultures converged, including Baiyue culture, Central Plains culture, and Western culture, and it also had the important support of Lingnan culture.However, this force does not seem to be as far-reaching as Beijing culture.Beijing has a number of art academies such as Beijing Film Academy, Communication University of China, and Central Academy of Fine Arts, as well as first-class cultural institutions such as Peking University and Renmin University of China; in addition to personnel training, Beijing is also a gathering place for cultural talents across the country. The famous representative of cultural and creative industries is 798; at the same time, Beijing is also the base camp of foreign cultures in China, such as the pioneers of foreign cultures such as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art.

Compared with Shenzhen, Guangzhou obviously has not found its own positioning, and Guangzhou's core advantages have yet to be discovered.In the early days of reform and opening up, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have always been the experimental field of China's economy, which has brought vitality to the Chinese economy to break through the rigid system. But now, both places are facing bottlenecks in urban development. These bottlenecks come from their own industrial structure and development. These bottlenecks also affect the way out of the two cities and the direction of the people who live or will live here. The two cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen can be said to be typical representatives of Guangdong.One contains Guangdong's long-standing Lingnan culture, and the other shows Guangdong's modern civilization.Although there are differences in time and culture between the two, they are placed in the same background: reform and opening up and the Chinese-style modernization of "ten thousand years is too long, seize the day". The door of reform and opening up was first opened in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and that land received unprecedented fresh air.When myths were born and patterns were formed, gold diggers began to flock to them.At the same time, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are also walking shoulder to shoulder on the road of "fast forward", racing against the speed of "time is money" and "time is life". Therefore, resources are shared by more and more entrants, and the pursuit of "efficiency" also compresses time. "Fast" becomes a norm, and people start to compete and become anxious. High-pressure competition not only affects people, but also drives the two cities to move forward desperately.Although Guangzhou and Shenzhen are moving towards international cities, they are also infected with "metropolitan diseases". These diseases deeply affect the people in the cities, just like viruses...