The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City

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There isn't really an argumentative point to the book, besides describing this miracle of transformation. The author kind of highlights the role of individual actors, including of the mayor Liang Xiang and his role in encouraging long term investments in education, schools, and hospitals. She also sort of takes a stance on the urban villages within Shenzhen such as Baishizhou, talking about how important they, and the illegal peasant housing built within them, were to the development and growth of the city as a whole, but there really aren't any strong claims made. Which makes sense because the title is just "The story of China's instant city". The idea that Shenzhen is a replicable model reinforces the assumption that cities can be politically planned and socially engineered from scratch,” Du writes. “But the Shenzhen experiment, as a singular successful case, has overshadowed the numerous examples of zone-based urbanization and developments which have not flourished in the same way.” The Shenzhen effect: Why China’s original ‘model’ city matters more than ever.” CNN, May 23, 2020 ( https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/shenzhen-effect-china-model-city-intl-hnk/).

I moved to the US in early 2006 to teach at MIT. However, my mind kept returning to China, and especially to Shenzhen. So I decided to accept an offer to teach at HKU and one motivation behind this move was Hong Kong’s proximity to Shenzhen. Any observer of modern China would need to understand the metamorphosis of Shenzhen—the People's Republic's first and most successful Special Economic Zone (SEZ) located immediately north of Hong Kong. Juan Du's The Shenzhen Experiment contests the conventional understanding of the city's development, which focuses on how decisions by key Chinese Communist Party leaders transformed a sleepy fishing village into a modern metropolis.Juan Du (2018). Beyond Classification. e-flux, architecture. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/urban-village/169804/beyond-classification/ (December 2018) This remarkable exploration of modern China reveals the humanity hidden in the shadows of international finance and globalized architecture. It is the extraordinary story of ordinary lives surviving and thriving in one of China’s most dynamic cities.”—Austin Williams, author of China’s Urban Revolution and New Chinese Architecture: Twenty Women Building the Future Juan Du (2010). Urban Myth of a New Chinese City, Journal of Architectural Education, 63 (2), 65-66.

the story of Shenzhen is not simply one of reforms and policies; it is a collection of stories of personal struggles and redemptions. Juan Du (2015). Sustaining What? In Shi Jian (Ed.), New Observations: A Collection of Architectural Criticism. Shanghai: Tongji University Press. Campbell, Joel (2021). "The Shenzhen experiment: the story of China's instant city". International Affairs. 97 (2): 589–590. doi: 10.1093/ia/iiab026. Juan Du (2014). 10 Million Units: Housing and Affordable City. In Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture organizing committee (Ed.), Architecture creates cities. Cities create architecture: 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (pp. 256-269). Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press.The book has eight chapters, organized into four sections. Chapters are named after landmarks and cultural aspects, which Du describes as "artifacts". [8] Juan Du’s research and writings have been published in Asia, Europe and the United States, including The Architectural Review, Volume, Domus, Journal of Architectural Education, e-flux, Time+Architecture, Urban Flux and Urban China. Her book The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City was recently published by Harvard University Press. Juan is a recognised scholar on China’s rapid urbanisation, and her works have been featured by international journals and media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, CNN, Wired, and Nature. The truth, it turns out, is a little more complex and a lot more interesting. In her latest book, The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City, Juan Du, an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, charts the city’s history alongside its recent boom. We learn that Shenzen’s pre-history is not just a curious sidenote swept away by the Reform and Opening Up policies of Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping.

Joel Campbell of Troy University argued that the book was supposed to be about how Shenzhen developed post-1979 but that it should have focused more on that era and on the area political figures and less on the pre-1979 period. [15] During the more recent history, Bao’an County’s agricultural and aquacultural productions, such as lychees and oysters, were important exports in the 1950s. Juan Du (2011). 10 Million Units: Housing and Affordable City. In Terence Riley (Ed.), 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture Exhibition Catalogue (pp. 26-27). N.p: n.p.PF: You challenge the idea of Shenzhen as a ‘blank canvas’ where nothing much existed before. What was Shenzhen, before it was Shenzhen? Juan Du asks whether Shenzhen is the blueprint for a modern Chinese city, and what lessons have been learned since Deng Xiaoping supported the opening up of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Zhou stated that the book "is an inspiring addition to the study of Shenzhen in the English-language world". [19]