Shenzhen: Two Generations of “New Citizens”

By staff reporter ZHANG MAN

You can still get good help in Shenzhen: New generation migrant-workers-turned-domestics are a major occupational group.

AUGUST 26, 2010 was a special day for Shenzhen. Thirty years ago the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress designated a 327.5-square-kilometer area of Shenzhen as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on a trial basis, the first such zone in the reform and opening-up process. It put in train the transformation of this former fishing village into one of the most modern metropolises in China.

Over the past three decades, Shenzhen’s average annual GDP growth has been 25.8 percent. With a GDP of RMB 820.1 billion and per-capita GDP of RMB 93,000 in 2009, Shenzhen is now among China’s wealthiest cities. Its staggering economic development is one of the greatest achievements of China’s economic reforms. Shenzhen, full of pace and passion, is also a “dream factory,” where countless wishes have come true.

That Shenzhen’s miraculous success owes a large debt to its army of migrant workers is an undeniable fact. Of the city’s 12-million-plus inhabitants only about 1.7 million have permanent resident status, and of the remaining “non-registered” inhabitants about 80 percent are farmer-turned-workers. About 64 percent of Shenzhen’s tax revenue relies on the manufacturing sector, in which 80 percent of the employees are farmer-turned-workers. How have such people found their pot of gold at the end of rainbow?

A First-Generation Story

Yang Qin was 18 when she left her home in Nanning of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region for Shenzhen. Back then, in 1990, there was a popular saying that ”only the cream” went to Shenzhen. The fast-growing city attracted high fliers from all over the country. But that would not describe Yang: she’d qualified for senior high, but without money to fund further education, her father dragged her onto a Shenzhen-bound train. On the way she just felt depressed.

Most people in Shenzhen would probably cite the opening of the first MacDonald’s on Jiefang Road and the founding of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as the most memorable events of 1990. But what Yang Qin remembers best about that year was the long and arduous winter journey: the fastening on her cloth shoes didn’t work properly and finally she was obliged to slip them off and go barefoot.

On an acquaintance’s recommendation, Yang got a job at a toy factory in Longgang District. “I felt lucky to have a job, so I never felt life was hard even though I had to work till one in the morning everyday with no weekends off,” recalls Yang. She earned around 60 to 70 yuan a month, and since there were few places for her to spend her money in the then underdeveloped Longgang District she was able to save money and remit her savings back home.