Reform pioneer Shenzhen to lead China's socialist path

BEIJING -- China's southern metropolis Shenzhen has taken new moves to relax market access, consolidating its trailblazing role in the country's reform and opening-up in a new chapter.

A total of 24 special measures will be adopted in Shenzhen to ease market access in sectors including the application of advanced technologies and their industrial development, financial investment, medicine and health, education and culture, and transportation, according to a government document unveiled on Wednesday.

One of China's first special economic zones established in 1980, Shenzhen is now more than just a paragon of miraculous development. In 2019, it was tasked with propelling the growth of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao area and building a pilot demonstration area of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

According to the blueprint for the demonstration area, Shenzhen will by 2025 rank among the top cities in the world in terms of economic strength and quality of development. By the middle of the 21st century, the city will become one of the top cosmopolises in the world and a global pacesetter with outstanding competitiveness, innovative capacity and influence.

To realize these visions, China in October 2020 unveiled a plan for the 2020-2025 period that specified measures to be taken in Shenzhen. These measures covered business environment optimization, technological innovation and the construction of a higher-level open economy.

The plan pledged to pilot the comprehensive authorized reform measures to grant Shenzhen greater autonomy in the reform of important areas and key links.

In response, a list of 40 such authorized measures was unveiled later that month, featuring entries focused on the market-oriented allocation of production factors, business environment, science and technology innovation, opening-up, public services, as well as the environment and urban space governance.

The metropolis has started carrying out some of the measures, having piloted a registration-based system at the ChiNext board of growth enterprises and having passed a personal bankruptcy ordinance.

The easing of market access announced on Wednesday provides more evidence that Shenzhen is testing the waters for China's overall reform, as the city was hand-picked to pilot such moves in a 2021 action plan aimed at the construction of a high-standard market system.

In terms of driving regional development, Shenzhen was named one of the core engines of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and a plan was issued last September to help Shenzhen's Qianhai play an exemplary and leading role in the area.

Shenzhen, where the Shekou industrial zone blasted open the Chinese economy and the first land transaction was made at a rap of a gavel, has never ceased breaking new ground and smashing old norms. The metropolis reborn from change will live and breathe reform.