Shenzhen is Different

It would be imprudent to use Shenzhen as an example to make a case that western China's economic growth is going to pick up steam. Shenzhen, which's a city abutting Hong Kong, started courting investment from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand in the 90s. At the time Hong Kong's economy was growing at a healthy clip just like South Korea . It even had a diversified economy including manufacturing; now it's just a tourist hotspot for mainlanders and a channel through which well-to-do business people-mainly from mainland China- transfer their dosh to other nations. Hong Kong is also a place where you find international capital flows flooding into China via Hong Kong, including hot money and funds set up by "turks" like George Soros. George Soros didn't go in for the kill until 1997, during which the so-called Asian financial crisis-foreign capital was fleeing Hong Kong and other Asian markets in droves- had eviscerated Hong Kong's ability to build up enough war chest to stave off the attack launched by George Soros.

It was a different picture for Hong Kong and its companies when they began building a beachhead in Shenzhen in the 80s, using it as a platform from which to expand into other parts of China. In a sense, you could say that Shenzhen was truly lucky because China's leaders were eager to use Shenzhen as a testing ground to see if Western ideas like free markets and privatization could take root in China. Buoyed by Deng Xiaoping's talk of pushing through reforms in the South, Shenzhen attracted more investment not just from Hong Kong and Taiwan but Thailand and Malaysia as well, where the biggest companies were run by ethnic Chinese who felt compelled to invest in China. Charoen Pokphand Group or 正大集团 in Chinese was one of them; it even teamed up with CCTV to produce a TV show called 正大综艺 and used it as a calling card. Other ethnic Chinese businessmen like Robert Kuok, the richest man in Malaysia , was also pumping money into China to show their fealty to China just like their ancestors did when China was fighting off the invasion of Japanese troops.

In a word, if hadn't been for such business people from Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Taiwan, Shenzhen wouldn't have been able to grow its economy without a hitch. Then most American companies and European companies were still the diffident ones when it comes to investing in China; they were apprehensive that their assets would be seized by the government ruled by chin-jutting nationalism. Japanese companies had made massive investments in China before Hong Kong; however, they eventually had trouble expanding their businesses in whole China because they were repelled by anti-Japanese sentiment in China.

Shenzhen then also had an advantage that today's Western cities don't have: workers from different cities of China flocked to Shenzhen to look for jobs, most of whom were young lads and lasses gung-ho about learning new skills. That's the opposite of today's most Western cities: most ambitious young folk living there are eager to find jobs in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai after graduation. Speaking to a reporter, a young man said " I just can't imagine living in a backwater place like this forever; it's a rabbit hole crammed with staleness." To be fair, there are indications that China has been working hard to find a way to tackle poverty there. Hoping to pep up Western cities' economy, China has unveiled some support programs designed to help local people. One of them is called 西部计划, in which college students are sent to the poorest places in the South to help local inhabitants shed poverty. Problem is some students, knowing that they only stay in such places for one or two years, simply use it as a way to score political points. As a result, they tend to muddle through instead of taking proactive steps when asked to set out a plan to help the needy there. Worst yet, even the big-picture or aspiring students who want to help the poor there find themselves caught up in a tight spot when mingling with some local bureaucrats refusing to try new ideas. Livid, one of such students post a blog post decrying local parochial thinking, saying "the village head only expresses interest in playing up to her superiors rather than helping people." Such sentiments and gripes have been echoed by other students who have signed on as 村官 in such places overrun by rafts of paupers and clodhoppers who even express bewilderment at the idea of reading books and receiving schooling; only a smattering of young people and some hardheaded sorts there use education as a means to shake off the shackles of conventional thinking and grotty habits.

Regardless, it would be hard for you to change this now unless you are a world leader. And it would be otiose for people to make fantasies. A better alternative would be to issue a clarion call to young people in China to seek enlightenment instead of wallowing in cultural decadence typified by their eagerness to watch dreadful vidoes or TV dramas and read novels with preposterous story lines that glorify sensual pleasure or Dionysian tendencies. In a nutshell, spending lots of time watching videos on Tiktok or watching TV dramas with cockamamie story lines and flash characters only stultifies your mind, turning you into a mindless sort who just thinks like Tucker Carlson working at Fox News.

We need to be educated first before we set out to change the world. That's what most Western cities in China need. Education is the name of the game. By the way, I'm not talking about learning by rote. I'm talking about critical thinking and our ability to use reason and knowledge