"The success of Shenzhen's urbanization process is a typical sample of China's rapid urbanization, which has its unique attraction in the process of urban development in China and even in the world, so the fascinating question is: Why is Shenzhen that can achieve urbanization so quickly?"

"The neoliberalism and globalization have pushed the city that had been a poor and backwater border town to the forefront of institutional reform and industrial innovation as a test field for Chinese reform and opening up. It has achieved a 60-fold increase in population size, a 15-fold increase in built-up areas, and 14,090-fold economic growth during the past 40 years, even realized comprehensive urbanization as early as 2004. Shenzhen has not only become China's core growth pole through taking the lead in institutional reform and innovation in land, market and society, but also ranks among the world's first-tier cities in terms of competitiveness and innovation capabilities."

"Over the past 40 years, Shenzhen has been transformed from a small fishing village into an international city full of charm, vitality, innovation and creativity. However, there are still gaps in the levels of innovation, science and technology education and public service between Shenzhen and innovative cities with global influence."

"For now, what makes Shenzhen unique as a manufacturing hub is its ability to accommodate everything from the serious to the silly, from the experimental to the sustainable, from devices that alleviate poverty to gadgets that grab headlines."

"Being a key hub in the global electronic information technology industry, Shenzhen in recent years has taken the construction of a smart city as an important driving force to promote industrial transformation and upgrading, improving city management and giving full play to new technology."

"Shenzhen is being aggressively pushed forward as China’s model for its future, in sharp contrast perhaps to Hong Kong — a future that will include a central focus on emerging technology standards such as the digital yuan being piloted in Shenzhen now."

"The city has since grown into a tech hub, synonymous of smart hardware and technological innovation within the People’s Republic of China, as a hub where foreigners and domestic companies come together to quickly innovate and build on hardware."

"Shenzhen is shouldering the weight of innovation to achieve Chinese tech breakthroughs in strategic industries while propelling the entire country up the value chain to hedge against economic headwinds, punctuated by four “D’s” – debt, deflation, de-risking and demographics."

"As China’s pre-eminent tech hub, Shenzhen is home to industry giants such as Huawei Technologies, BYD and DJI. Yet, dozens of companies headquartered here are now on Washington’s “Entity List” that comprises companies and individuals from a range of countries, and which represents perceived threats to US national security."

"The southern city where China’s economic transformation began more than four decades ago, and which has seen its hi-tech industry become the bellwether for growth, is vowing to double down on efforts to shore up the sector as the nation strives to move up the industrial chain and counteract US-led tech restrictions."

"Shenzhen, with fewer than 30,000 inhabitants scattered in a number of small village clusters, made history as China’s first “special economic zone”, where foreign direct investments and private enterprises were allowed. The impact was immediate, and profound."

"Shenzhen is a city built on migrant labour. The government there has always adopted policies that adapt to that fact. Now it is a lot easier for migrants to find a place in school for their children, but it is still discretionary."

"In terms of city status and influence, Shenzhen leads the development of Chinese cities and spearheads the progress of the whole world. First, Shenzhen has directly pushed the establishment of a national system of market economy and opening up on all fronts by expanding and replicating the original reforms that were then piloted in other regions across China. The city’s successful experience and development philosophies have inspired China and the entire world to change their mentality regarding development. Second, a substantial part of wealth created by Shenzhen goes to the government in the form of taxation, and to migrant workers in the form of wages, supporting national economic growth, development of the hinterland and the prosperity of millions of households."

"Against the backdrop of China’s reform and opening up, Shenzhen managed to unshackle the chain of planned economy guided by market economy principles and took bold measures in reforming the systems of pricing, payment, land and housing, infrastructure construction and labour employment by establishing a special economic zone."

"With neither resources nor production factors, Shenzhen made leapfrogging development from a remote country town to a global technological centre and from an agricultural town to a manufacturing powerhouse over a period of 40 years. From the development stage featuring rapid quantitative growth driven by production factors to the throes of transformation when the economy slowed down and the growth engine shifted gears, and then the stage when innovation-driven, high-quality development was pursued, Shenzhen showcased the whole process of how a city joins the global value chain and moves from the bottom to the highest rank, making itself a role-model in promoting competitiveness for global peer cities."

"After being established as China’s first economic zone in 1980, Shenzhen quickly developed from a sleepy small border town into a large modern city, quite impressive in the history of industrialization, modernizing, and urbanization."

"From a population of 30,000 in the early 1970s, the city has grown to over 10 million, with gleaming high-rises, a modern transport system, and world-class retail. The local government gives grants for filing patents and for starting maker spaces. Gentrification and rising rents have made it the most expensive city in China, as the factories that fueled its boom move steadily outward into the rest of the Pearl River Delta."

"Shenzhen is changing in other ways, too. Instead of just hardware (like hoverboards), it’s making sophisticated products that combine hardware with software (just-in-time bookable electric scooters, app-controlled drones) and, increasingly, artificial intelligence (translation devices, toy robots, semi-autonomous vehicles). Moving beyond its reputation for developing cheap rip-offs of other people’s ideas, it’s become more of a hub that connects innovation, manufacturing, and knowledge all over the world."

"Shenzhen has always been a pioneering city for the People’s Republic of China. In May 1980, then-paramount leader of the PRC, Deng Xiaoping elevated it into a “special economic zone”, a first in market capitalism in a country where GDP per capita hovered around $175, and which was only a few years removed from Maoist economics. Shenzhen would become known as the emerging point of the “opening and reform” period of Chinese history that would slowly build towards China becoming the second largest economy in the world."

"It took only 40 years for Shenzhen to realize relatively successful urbanization, including rapid and astonishing achievements in population growth, economic development and urban expansion. “Shenzhen Speed” has become a proper term, which also suggests the Shenzhen miracle represents the success of China's rapid urbanization. Shenzhen's development model has its own uniqueness. The wave of neoliberalism and globalization has given Shenzhen a stage for development, and its location advantage allowed it to quickly integrate into the global production network, to accumulate wealth and transfer resources for early development. Although Shenzhen's success is unique to its time and place, it is not impossible to replicate. Since its development, Shenzhen has been taking high-quality talents, active private economy and entrepreneurial culture, as well as scientific and technological innovation represented by the information industry, as the core engines of its own development, and has continuously enhanced its advantages through policy implementation. For China and other cities in the Global South, it is one of the most effective ways to attract talents and innovative activities through institutional innovation."

"Major Chinese leaders such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Xi Jinping have both visited Shenzhen many times, pointing out a new direction for Shenzhen's development at key times. Deng Xiaoping mainly designated the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone as one of the earliest special economic zones in China. This story was vividly described as “an old man drew a circle on the South China Sea” and was widely sung, which also implied that Shenzhen experienced the process of elevating from a neglected marginal region to an important growth pole by adopting a national strategic layout."

"Zhengzhou has a long history. As early as 3,500 years ago, it became the capital of the Shang Dynasty (Sixteenth - eleventh centuries B.C.) which together with ancient Egypt, India, and Babylon, was considered to be one of the oldest civilizations of the world. Today cultural relics and historical sites abound in and around the city, attracting more and more tourists and archaeologists both from China and abroad."

"Thanks to a subtropical climate, Guangzhou is blessed with flowers all year round. So many that it has earned itself the nickname, ‘City of Flowers’. Its striking blooms are celebrated annually with the Spring Festival Flower Fair, when the streets and alleyways are awash with colour."

"For centuries, Guangzhou has intermittently been a nerve center for migrants, whether internal or foreign. When African traders arrived in the city in the early 2000s, they formed a particularly visible enclave -- partly because they tended to congregate in one or two relatively small areas, and partly because black skin had not before been widely seen in China in large numbers."

"Guangzhou, the Chinese city formerly known as Canton, is famous mainly for its commerce and its cuisine. Throw in eight-lane highways that loop every which way like giant concrete pretzels, and seemingly year-round gray skies, and it’s no wonder this industrial city along the Pearl River Delta of China has never been a tourist draw on par with, say, Shanghai or Beijing."

"But public sympathy has limits, particularly since studies show that migrants are responsible for much of the city’s street crime. Most major Chinese cities feel very safe by American standards. Still, in Guangzhou, thefts, purse snatching, robberies and muggings have become common."

"Coastal cities such as Shanghai or Guangzhou now resemble their capitalist counterparts, Singapore and Hong Kong."

"Due to its strategic vulnerability, it was largely ignored in the central policy written up by Mao Zedong. However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Guangzhou was one of the first cities earmarked for open market reforms under Deng Xiaoping's economic reform policies. Since then, Guangzhou has reclaimed its place as one of Chinas most prosperous and thriving cities."

"With a history of more than 2100 years, Guangzhou, despite its glory past, has now experienced a decline in the role as a central city in the region due to the rapid growth of cities in the Pearl River Delta. Guangzhou is also suffering from problems caused by congested inner city and unregulated growth of new development areas. The city’s structure has gradually changed from a compact model to leapfrogged urban sprawl. These problems are aggravated by limited land resource under its direct jurisdiction and the pressure to reposition itself in a regional development context that is more competitive than ever before."

"Maritime trade with important ports like Guangzhou and Quanzhou (in Fujian Province) has played a major role in developing cultural exchanges between India and South China. In the 3rd century BC, Guangzhou served as an important port."

"As the center of Cantonese culture, Guangzhou has a 4000-year civilization that can trace its roots to the Neolithic period. As a result of the intermingling of ethnic minority cultures, Han culture and foreign cultures, Cantonese culture is famous for its diversity and vitality."

"The Sacred Heart Cathedral in Guangzhou presents a particularly interesting case of a government-approved church serving multiple communities simultaneously. Balancing the needs of these communities—the Chinese Catholic community, expatriate and immigrant groups, particularly African migrants, the Church leadership—and the requirements of the local Chinese government, calls for sensitivity, adaptability, and a measure of openness to new forms of community participation. Due to the paradoxes and ambiguities in China’s religious policy, Catholic churches in China today enjoy relative autonomy from government control."

"Zhengzhou is important because of its geographic setting along the Yellow River and in the central plain. Relics show how Chinese people created their culture along the Yellow River, the cradle of Chinese civilisation."

"In the early 21st century, the city again asserted itself as a hub of commerce for the same reason as in the past - its central location made it a logical location for a major transport junction. This time, however, the thoroughfares were not rivers and canals, but railroads, highways and airports."

"Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan Province, is located in the middle of China. The famous Shaolin Temple near this city is the cradle of the Chinese martial arts that provided the inspiration for Kung Fu movies. Zhengzhou is a vital transportation hub especially for railways as many important railway trunks pass the city."

"With at least 3,500 years of history, Zhengzhou is one of China’s oldest cities."

"Zhengzhou, a city of more than 10 million inhabitants, stands on the south bank of the Yellow River, once known as China’s Sorrow for its catastrophic and recurring floods."

"The footage of a torrent of muddy water engulfing the broad thoroughfares of Zhengzhou, China, may look like a scene from an apocalyptic sci-fi movie. But for China’s leaders, these images speak not only to a dystopian future but also to the struggles of the past – and to the issue of the Chinese Communist party’s mandate to rule."

"No one weather event can be immediately linked to climate change, but the storm that flooded Zhengzhou and other cities in central China last week, killing at least 69 as of Monday, reflects a global trend of extreme weather that has seen deadly flooding recently in Germany and Belgium, and severe heat and wildfires in Siberia. The flooding in China, which engulfed subway lines, washed away roads and cut off villages, also highlights the environmental vulnerabilities that accompanied the country’s economic boom and could yet undermine it."

"Aline and I have travelled a very long, very hard road together, from our working class homes in rural Quebec to the palaces of London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. Politics was the route, public service the reward."

"This city is a completely female city. Female town. Beijing is male. All rough and politics. Shanghai is more delicate. Money talks. Beautiful. I had enough rough. I need details. Specially because (I am) a lady. I need city."

"China as a society, a government, an economy and a culture is quite difficult for us to comprehend today. The changes are so rapid in cities like Beijing and Shanghai and the culture remarkably fluid... China is increasingly influential in the world and more and more people have hopes that China will be a leader... China has ended up playing a critical role in geopolitics more quickly than anybody had anticipated."

"While collective memory is usually grounded in fact, it need not be. If you go to China, you will more than likely be told the story of the park in the foreign concession area of Shanghai that had on its gate a sign that read “Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted.” While it is true that the park was reserved for foreigners, insulting enough in itself, the real insult for most Chinese was their pairing with dogs. The only trouble is that there is no evidence the sign ever existed. When young Chinese historians expressed some doubts about the story in 1994, the official press reacted with anger. “Some people,” a well-known journalist wrote, “do not understand the humiliations of old Chinas history or else they harbour sceptical attitudes and even go so far as to write off serious historical humiliation lightly; this is very dangerous.” It can be dangerous to question the stories people tell about themselves because so much of our identity is both shaped by and bound up with our past history. That is why dealing with the past, in deciding on which version we want, or on what we want to remember and to forget, can become so politically charged."

"I would see something strange and mysterious, and treat it as normal ... Shanghai struck me as a magical place, a self-generating fantasy that left the real world far behind. There was always something odd and incongruous to see ... Anything was possible, and everything could be bought and sold. In many ways it seems like a stage set, but at the time it was real, and I think a large part of my fiction has been an attempt to evoke it by means other than memory."

"With its newspapers and radio stations in every language, Shanghai was a media city before its time, celebrated as the 'Paris of the Orient' and the wickedest city in the world ... Unlimited venture capitalism rode in style down streets lined with beggars showing their sores and wounds ... Every day the trucks of the Shanghai Municipal Council roamed the streets collecting the thousands of bodies of destitute Chinese who had starved to death on Shanghai's pavements, the hardest in the world."

"Bizarre advertising displays—the honour guard of fifty Chinese hunchbacks outside the film premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame sticks in my mind—were part of the everyday reality of the city, although I sometimes wonder if everyday reality was the one element missing from the city."

"The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's. Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet."

"[Shanghai] is a completely female city. Female town. Beijing is male. All rough and politics. Shanghai is more delicate. Money talks. Beautiful. I had enough rough. I need details. Specially because (I am) a lady. I need city."

"China as a society, a government, an economy and a culture is quite difficult for us to comprehend today. The changes are so rapid in cities like Beijing and Shanghai and the culture remarkably fluid... China is increasingly influential in the world and more and more people have hopes that China will be a leader... China has ended up playing a critical role in geopolitics more quickly than anybody had anticipated."