SHENZHEN LETTER:A prosperous city of 14 million is raising the bar for brand-name shopping and anti-corruption drives, writes CLIFFORD COONAN
IN THE MixC shopping mall in downtown Shenzhen, the sale at the Hugo Boss shop is drawing the crowds.
Young entrepreneurs and factory bosses with money to spend, who have turned this city into China’s capital of hustle, pick up the latest European fashions for the fast-approaching spring.
You can witness the same scene in Emporio Armani and Prada across the way in the sleek shopping centre.
It’s possible to walk around this southern Chinese boomtown adjoining Hong Kong and forget the Great Recession ever happened, so busy and buzzing are its precincts.
While many of the clothes are made locally in the giant factories around the city, they are exported, then re-imported, and hefty duties mean the clothes are more expensive than in Hong Kong. The shoppers don’t seem to care, as the glossy bags of purchases attest.
Shenzhen is China’s fastest-growing city, with 14 million inhabitants, and is the poster child for China’s 30-year period of opening up and reform.
This is where the first McDonald’s opened in China 20 years ago this year.
As the gateway to Hong Kong, Shenzhen has a strong frontier-town feel to it, with the seamy side that brings smuggling, prostitution and corruption.
Such aspects are much in evidence in Luohu Commercial City, the first thing you see when you enter from Hong Kong, and where you can buy pirated versions of the Hugo Boss and Armani clothes being sold in the MixC shopping mall.
But Luohu is becoming less and less representative of what is happening in the city.
The new rich of Shenzhen don’t want rip-off gear anymore and, increasingly, Shenzhen is settling down. The average age is still less than 30, but it is becoming a much more sophisticated place.
The city remains a giant service centre for the industrial estates surrounding it. The chances are that your mobile phone’s battery was made in Shenzhen. Indeed, most iPhones and iPods are made here or in the neighbourhood.
The story has passed into legend of how Deng Xiaoping proclaimed, “to get rich is glorious” in 1979, then came to Shenzhen on his emperor-like southern tour in 1992 and made a landmark speech signalling economic reform.
In 1980, Shenzhen became a “special economic zone”, a testing ground for capitalism in China. It has passed this test with distinction, and metamorphosed from a town of 30,000 fishermen into a great metropolis.
It is a city of migrants – even though we are deep in the province of Guangdong, or Canton, the common language is not the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong, but Mandarin, the language of power in China.
Five years ago, the Lonely Planetguide damned Shenzhen as a city "without culture or spirit". Not any more. With Hong Kong, Shenzhen is hosting a Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture attended by some of the world's most important architects.
The Shenzhen Art Museum is a highlight of any visit and there is a thriving contemporary art scene too.
The freshly minted Irish pub, McCawleys, in the central business district is airy, lively and full of customers. Many of them are Irish software experts and marketeers working for Cork entrepreneur Liam Casey’s PCH, but there is a healthy contingent of local Chinese punters as well.
China’s population considers corruption to be the biggest blot on its international image, and the ruling communists are anxious to project an image of clean hands and responsible leadership. So now Shenzhen is also trying to take a leading role in stamping out corruption and introducing more transparency.
It needed to. June saw mayor Xu Zongheng sacked for corruption. Vice-mayor Yang Guangliang is under investigation for allegedly taking bribes and using his official position for illegal gains. A few local police chiefs are being probed about allegations they provided long-term protection to a local criminal gang. This kind of graft angers people in China.
There was fury after the deputy airport police chief held a wedding banquet for his daughter with 110 tables of guests, who feasted on lobster and shark’s fin soup. An official inquiry was launched to find out how he could afford up to 500,000 yuan (€51,000) for such a sumptuous wedding banquet on a civil servant’s measly salary.
A couple of weeks earlier, a police officer in the city died of over-imbibing booze at a banquet with local leaders, bringing further negative attention to what the population sees as sleazy behaviour of officials trying to curry favour and score bribes.
The Shenzhen government has also introduced a more liberal and transparent approach to how it deals with journalists, aimed, on paper at least, at encouraging better access to government sources.
After all, it is no longer the early days of the economic boom. The newly rich entrepreneurs shelling out their hard-earned yuan for the latest Hugo Boss and Armani creations in the MixC mall expect better behaviour from their public servants.