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BEIJING: President Hu Jintao hailed the southern export hub of Shenzhen as a "miracle" on Monday as China marked 30 years of reforms in the city that provided the blueprint for the country's economic rebirth.
"The Shenzhen Special Economic Zone created a miracle in the world's history of industrialisation, urbanisation and modernisation and has contributed significantly to China's opening up and reform," Hu said on a visit to the southern city which borders Hong Kong.
"The central government will, as always, support the brave exploration of the special economic zone as well as its role of testing and carrying out reforms ahead of others," he said, according to state-run television.
Once a sleepy fishing village, Shenzhen is widely viewed as the cradle of China's dramatic transformation into a world economic and trade juggernaut.
In 1980, it became the first area in China designated as a special economic zone that could accept foreign investment, under reforms pioneered by late leader Deng Xiaoping.
It offered lower taxes and less red tape to attract the overseas investors whose factories staffed by China's abundant cheap labour set the mould for the country's explosive manufacturing-based economic growth.
Several other special economic zones followed, in the nearby cities of Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong province, the port of Xiamen in the southeastern province of Fujian and the southern island of Hainan.
The reforms touched off an annual economic growth rate of 25.8 per cent over the last 30 years in Shenzhen, compared with about 9.8 per cent for the entire country, according to government figures.
The population has ballooned to nearly nine million people, most of them members of China's huge army of migrant workers, according to official data.
Authorities expanded the area of the zone to just under 2,000 square kilometres (770 square miles) this year, nearly the size of Luxembourg, from the previous 396 square kilometres.
Located in the Pearl River Delta, the heartland of China's export-oriented economy, Shenzhen boasts one of the highest minimum wages in China at 1,100 yuan (US$160) per month, compared with just 600 yuan in the poor central province of Henan.
It is home to many high-tech firms, including Taiwanese IT giant Foxconn, which employs more than 400,000 people in the city to make products for Apple, Panasonic and other top brands.
The city, however, is often pointed to as a symbol of some of the social problems attending these Chinese economic model's reliance on cheap factory labour.
Foxconn, for example, has come under heavy criticism over working conditions at its factories after 13 Chinese employees committed suicide this year at Foxconn plants and an affiliate, including 10 in Shenzhen.
State media reports have also decried the city's thriving prostitution industry, while a corruption scandal involving mayor Xu Zongheng tainted the city last year. Xu was removed from office.
But Wang Rong, the Communist Party chief of Shenzhen, told a rally that the city would continue to play the role of "first mover" and strive to be the "vanguard of China's scientific development."
Shenzhen would build itself into a "modern and international" metropolis, Wang said, according to the official Xinhua news agency. - AFP/fa
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