Over the years, this village-turned-urban sprawl in south China has conjured up images of low-cost, low-tech factories churning out the stuff that fuelled China's economic take off. Shenzhen was the testing ground for the first tentative steps that China took over two decades ago to reform and open up its economy to the outside world.
It was from Shenzhen -- the original "special economic zone" -- that the workshops of China's export-oriented juggernaut spread like weeds up the banks of the Pearl River to places like Dongguan, Guangzhou and Foshan.
But these days, Shenzhen -- like the Pearl River Delta and, to a certain extent, the entire province of Guangdong -- is trying to reinvent itself as a high-tech economic powerhouse with an advanced services sector and more diversified ownership. It represents a significant shift to a more measured, higher value approach, far removed from the largely Hong Kong-funded industrial free-for-all fuelled by cheap labour.
"I have faith," Shenzhen Vice Mayor Zhang Siping said in a recent interview when asked about the city's future. "We in Shenzhen all have a pretty co-ordinated recognition of the issues ... We cannot just chase GDP growth alone." The change is partly evolutionary, experts say, and partly reflects a wish on the part of the central government to transform the whole Chinese economy, with Guangdong and booming areas around Shanghai and Beijing leading the way.
CHINA'S RICHEST PROVINCE:
Guangdong is used to playing a pioneering role. Its Pearl River Delta (PRD) took the lead as China loosened the reins on the economy in the late 1970s and then sought to make good on the words of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who said "to get rich is glorious".
From an under populated farming backwater, Guangdong has become the richest province in China and leads its peers in economic output, accounting for about 12 percent of national GDP. The population, including migrants, is near 100 million.
"It started with garments and footwear, then moved into consumer electronics. Now it's communications equipment, telecoms switches and routers, and automobiles," said Michael Enright, a Hong Kong-based expert on the region.
"It's a natural progression. This is the progression that Japanese companies went through after the Second World War in the '60s and '70s. It's a progression that Korean companies, the Korean economy went through in the '70s and '80s. It's a progression that Taiwanese companies have gone through."
Signs of the transformation are everywhere. In Dongguan, once a farm town near Shenzhen and now a city that is home to 10 million people and thousands of factories, the transformation is symbolised by what the government is doing to a suburban area around an old reservoir called Songshan Lake.
The spot has been chosen to be the heart of Dongguan's future business community and the city government has already invested some 6 billion yuan ($763 million) in infrastructure. Some 2,000 factories considered too basic or dirty have been closed down, and hundreds of farmers evicted.
"Crack down everything to build up a brand new city on a piece of empty land," Chen Xiaohui, board chairman and general manager of Songshan Lake Industry Development Co Ltd, said in English. "That's our idea," she said.
GUANGDONG REINVENTING ITSELF: Two major factors are helping make it possible for places like Dongguang to boldly push for a change in the manufacturing landscape, analysts say. First, a new highway network to the coast is making it possible to move factories inland, where officials are eager for the investment.
"A lot of times, the key in China is: how co-operative is your hinterland?" said William Fung, group managing director of Li & Fung Ltd, a big Hong Kong middle-man that scours China to buy everything from umbrellas to underwear for Western retailers. "Guangdong now looks at Hunan and Sichuan as a much more co-operative hinterland than Shanghai has in terms of Jiangsu and Zhejiang."
Second, most of the low-wage labourers who fill the Pearl River Delta's factories are migrants from rural areas inland. These workers are mobile, quickly moving on if the basic jobs they do disappear. "In other words, you don't end up with a bunch of unskilled people unemployed as a result," said Enright.
This means cities in the Delta, like Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou, can be ruthless about weeding out low-tech, energy-wasting firms by raising minimum wages, land and utility costs. In an illustration of the extent of the changes sweeping Guangdong, the province's premier investment zone has been ordered by the central government's top planning department to completely reinvent itself.
Zhao Weiguo, a director of Guangzhou Development District, said the zone was told: "You can't just do industry. You also have to develop a modern service sector -- the third sector -- and the high-technology sector." The region has its problems, to be sure, including a chronic power shortage and some of the worst pollution in the country.
But officials play down the energy crunch and in Foshan, a hazy city on the west bank of the Pearl River next to Guangzhou, they say they are rejecting businesses that aren't environmentally friendly. "Even if you say you'll invest a lot of money here, we still don't want you," said Li Zipu, assistant to the Foshan mayor and director of the municipal trade bureau. "You cannot pay for fast economic growth with the environment," he said.
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