Shenzhen is not only evolving from the world's factory to an innovative center but also becoming a cultural hub

The Shenzhen Prince Bay Cruise Homeport in Guangdong Province, south China, on October 15, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]

The immense crowd, the technicolor buildings, the labyrinthine markets. No, we are not in Tokyo, we are in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in south China. This sprawling megalopolis is often touted as China's Silicon Valley, but it offers far more than tech campuses and hipster joints.

In 1980, Shenzhen was transformed from mere farming and fishing communities in the Pearl River Delta into a special economic zone, one of four cities chosen by central authorities to undergo a pilot economic experiment.

Economic incentives allowed Shenzhen to boom at an unparalleled speed. Between 1979 and 2019, its GDP grew at an average annual rate of 28 percent to 2.69 trillion yuan ($409 billion). The city's permanent population rose from 310,000 to more than 13 million, with migrants currently accounting for over 63 percent of the residents.  

A performance at Nantou Ancient Town in Shenzhen on August 26. [Photo/Xinhua]

Innovation-led growth

Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping modeled Shenzhen to be closely interlinked to support Hong Kong's economy. If Hong Kong was the market for the world, Shenzhen was the factory. However, in 2018 Shenzhen's GDP, $370 billion, surpassed that of Hong Kong, $360 billion, for the first time based on the official exchange rate.

This skyrocketing economy is partly due to the tens of millions of young people who have poured into the city. While the demographics of migrants have hardly changed—young people in their 20s, the focus has shifted from factory workers to engineers and people in the hi-tech field. Investments have moved away from traditional manufacturing into research and development.

Shenzhen's hi-tech industrial development zone was set up in September 1996, originally occupying 11.5 square km of land. In 2019, the government announced its plans to expand the zone to 159.5 square km to house an additional 2,000 enterprises. Currently, innovative business, such as the Internet, biotechnology, and telecom accounts for more than 40 percent of the city's economic output.

Visiting companies in Shenzhen is like stepping into the future. Drone manufacturer DJI, which was initially funded in 2006 by its founder's university scholarship, has grown to be a mammoth $3-billion empire. In midst of the technology boom where every other tech company in China was focusing on software, the company was not swayed — it stayed true to its hardware calling. Manufacturing drone parts requires tooling and engineering skills of the highest degree. Shenzhen has both: factories of all shapes and sizes right on the doorstep, as well as skilled engineers.

With a strong research and development (R&D) department and a nimble production line, DJI had captured 74 percent of the world's drone market by 2018. In addition to photography and filmmaking drones, its products are used to spray liquid pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides in farms across the world at a precision variable rate. Future development includes Terra, a 3D modeling and drone mapping software package that captures, visualizes, and analyzes aerial images. The technology can be applied for anything from public safety, construction, infrastructure, agriculture to film industries. For DJI, the sky is the limit.

Apart from product development, DJI hosts RoboMaster, an annual international robotics competition for aspiring engineers to design and build next-generation robots. The winners gain tens of thousands of dollars and most importantly, a job offer from DJI or another up-and-coming company.

In Shenzhen, agility is not something possessed only by tech companies. Even 32-year-old Ping An Insurance (Ping An) has grown from an insurer to an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered force. Its machine learning-powered customer service line now supports its workforce. The voice of the company's customer service bears a striking resemblance to the human speech, characterized by a tinge of the northeastern dialect in the country and a subtle imperfection in its voice, but it is in fact an AI-powered machine.

The company's smart car insurance claim app helps process minor damage claims by the sheer input of a car ID code and photo uploads of the damage. The app, powered by a data model of 60,000 car types and 25 million car parts, then assesses the damage based on photo recognition before providing a precise report. In 2018, Ping An paid 1.9 trillion yuan ($289 billion) to 11 million car insurance claims. With this technology, 98.7 percent of the claims were paid within a day. 

To put that into perspective, insurance companies worldwide take one to two weeks to pay out any insurance claims. This efficiency has drawn interest from Swiss and Italian firms alike, which Ping An is sharing its technology with this year.

Ping An has also invested in smart city programs. The iShenzhen smartphone app developed by the company consolidates 40 of the city's public services, speeding up related processes. 

The company's Smart City Department Director Hu Wei said residence registration in Shenzhen used to consume more than a month, costing 500 yuan ($76) and requiring 10 original documents and 14 document copies. With iShenzhen, it now takes between half a day and a week to process, and is free of charge.

During the first half of the year when the coronavirus epidemic meant a slump in car sales, Ping An did not sit still. It not only grew its financing and loan services but also developed a tool that estimates costs for car manufacturers. Most remarkably, the company's previously award-winning pulmonary module CT scan algorithm was implemented to help doctors find and locate nodules in the lungs of suspected coronavirus patients in seconds.  

A sightseeing bus in Shenzhen on October 22. The city has launched three sightseeing bus routes to promote tourism. [Photo/Xinhua]

A habitable city

For a city almost three times the size of Singapore, Shenzhen is built to be human-friendly. In fact, the city now bears resemblance to the very walkable city country. 

Previously rapidly built according to a car-oriented tradition, the Shenzhen Pedestrian Plan was implemented in 2007. Now in the central business district, no road is more than four lanes wide, allowing for residents, old and young, to cross safely. In addition, the turn-lanes are now landscaped raised medians. This way, instead of trying to run across eight lanes under one minute (a task impossible for many elderly people), people in Shenzhen can cross four lanes, then wait on this raised platform, often under tree shades, before crossing the next four. 

All these strategies make the city safe and accessible for people. At the 22nd annual Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair on November 11-15, there was an entire segment dedicated to smart city, where several companies showcased slow traffic management — a strategy to make cities habitable for humans, not cars.

The Smart City Department of Ping An attempts to crack this traffic jam problem by combining new communications technology with the power of AI that crunches vast amounts of data in real time, all in order to detect congestion in certain parts of the city. These data can be used by the local government to apply a booking system to ease those clogged roads.

Shenzhen is now one of the 13 pilot cities promoting alternative-energy public transport in China.

Like many cities around the world, Shenzhen has seen its fair share of pollution. The official data shows that the city experienced 177 days with dusty haze in 2004, almost 10 times the number in the 1980s. To tackle this problem, it has ambitiously adopted electric vehicles (EVs). All buses and 99 percent of taxi fleets in the city are run on electric energy. The use of 20,000 battery-powered taxis is estimated to cut 856,000 tons of carbon emissions per year.

The program has adequate fiscal backing. The Central Government subsidizes the purchase of each electric taxi with up to 60,000 yuan ($9,150), while Shenzhen is drawing subsidy plans. Moreover, EV supplier BYD is headquartered in Shenzhen, as well as the vehicle maintenance and repair stores. This public-private cooperation not only cuts smog but also fuels the development of the alternative energy industry, the Shenzhen Municipal Transport Commission said.  

A crop protection drone developed by DJI is launched in Shenzhen on November 9. [Photo/Xinhua]

A cultural hub

For many years, Shenzhen was a place people came to work in. Now, the city wants to transform itself into a place people want to live in.

Nantou Ancient Town is a mixture of both ancient and Shenzhen's more recent urban histories. While the site's history can be traced back to 331, only the southern gate remains from the historical period. This gateway leads to a 330-meter-long alleyway where 88 buildings have been refurbished into cafes, shops, galleries, exhibition spaces and digital museums. Here, instead of being demolished, ancient histories have been preserved, an old town regenerated, and new public squares as well as green spaces created—forming a supercharged experimental urban design zone that both represents the cultural layer of the city and improves the quality of life for its residents.

Another cultural destination in Shenzhen is the OCT-LOFT complex. Located in the tourist resort Overseas Chinese Town, the abandoned factory buildings took two years of renovation by local architecture firm Urbanus. It now serves as a focal point for the megacity's burgeoning art and design scene. This was the site of the first Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, which was founded by the Shenzhen Municipal Government in 2005, and has since drawn interest for its arts and design events. In the same year that the October Art and Design Gallery opened—2008, Shenzhen was dubbed UNESCO City of Design, the first city in China to join the UNESCO Creative City network.

In 2017, the Shenzhen Design Society was inaugurated. It remains China's first and so far, the only museum dedicated to design (in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London). In 2019, over 1,000 designers from over 30 countries and regions brought more than 2,500 works to the Design for the Future event. 

Shenzhen has also become proactive in exporting Chinese culture by holding so far 15 of the China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair, a platform to help Chinese culture go global.

Daring to experiment is a spirit held by the people, enterprises, and government of Shenzhen. The city remains an export-import hub, but the list of its products has grown, from cheap electronics to innovative technology, and now cultural products. 

Constant reinvention is required for a city to thrive; that is exactly what the 40-year-young Shenzhen is doing.