Over three decades ago Shanzhen was a small town in the Southern part of China where its residents were mainly fishermen and farmers.
The city was originally a hilly area, with fertile agrarian land. However, after becoming a special economic zone in 1979, Shenzhen underwent tremendous change in landscape.
Most of these smaller hills have since been leveled. With the influx of migrants from inland China, Shenzhen is experiencing a second stage boom, and it is now expanding peripherally and the hills in surrounding areas are still continuously being leveled to make way for more development.
The town has grown to become among China’s wealthiest towns actually, Shenzhen was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world during the 1990s and the 2000s.
Shenzhen’s population boom slowed down to less than one percent per year by 2013 as the manufacturing boom ebbed in favor of other industries therefore becoming a major financial center in southern China.
The city is home to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as well as the headquarters of numerous high-tech companies. It is this that has seen it dubbed as China’s Silicon Valley due to this high concentration of technology companies.
This has attracted Huge Mobile companies such as Huawei and ZTE having their head quarters there and manufacturing plants as well as host IT driven campuses like the Huawei Shanzhen Campus that covers a huge part of the town with over 50,000 employees.
Shanzhen is also home for Foxconn, which is also home of Apple’s production in Shenzhen, visible mostly from the road as a forest of barbed-wire covered buildings.
The beautiful town located in the Pearl River Delta bordering Hong Kong to the south, Huizhou to the north and northeast, Dongguan to the north and northwest. Lingding Yang (Lintin Sea) and Pearl River to the west and Mirs Bay to the east, also holds Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industrial Park (SHIP), which was founded in September 1996.
It covers an area of 11.5 km2. Industries encouraged in the zone include Biotechnology/Pharmaceuticals, Building/Construction Materials, Chemicals Production and Processing, Computer Software, Electronics Assembly & Manufacturing, Instruments & Industrial Equipment Production, Medical Equipment and Supplies, Research and Development, Telecommunications Equipment.
The town as well holds Shenzhen Software Park which is integrated with Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industry Park, an important vehicle established by Shenzhen Municipal Government to support the development of software industry.
The Park was approved to be the base of software production of the National Plan in 2001.
Also notable is the fact that although China doesn’t support the common social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram as well as other support search engines like Google Search and browsers like Google Chrome, they have their own unique browser like Weibo and UI and search engine like the Badu, so next you make a visit to China or Shanzhen to be specific try an experience with Badu.
Shanzhen also has a dedicated street in the town’s CBD that sells technology devices and the fact that with a population of close to ten million it is worth noting that a great portion have access to smartphones. The wi-fi accessibility also across the town is worth noting.
