China’s Xi Jinping praises Shenzhen as economic model for country at ‘historic crossroad’
- Xi Jinping on Wednesday praised Shenzhen for showcasing China‘s potential for economic transformation following 40 years of impressive growth
- After decades of rapid economic expansion, China is facing unprecedented challenges that require continued reform and opening up, Xi said
President Xi Jinping is pinning his hopes on Shenzhen to set an example for the rest of China by renewing Deng Xiaoping’s success of experimenting with the city and applying it elsewhere, which helped turn the country from an economic backwater to the world’s second largest economy.
In an hour-long speech on Wednesday, China’s most powerful leader in decades said the country was facing new challenges and called on the city to make “greater contributions” to national prosperity – noting it had “blazed a trail” four decades ago by experimenting with market practises.
Under the guidance of former paramount leader Deng, China went from one the poorest countries in the world in the late 1970s following the Cultural Revolution to one of the most prosperous.
The world today is undergoing great changes unseen in a century, and the global spread of the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the process
Its policies were later applied across the country, becoming the core of China’s growth strategy and an alternative development model to the West’s combination of free markets and liberal democracy.
Xi said the economic success of Shenzhen, which now has an economy larger than Hong Kong, showed the world “the boundless power of China’s reform and opening up as well as the bright prospects for socialism with Chinese characteristics”.
But after four decades of rapid economic expansion, questions are mounting about whether China can continue its impressive growth as the United States targets it as a strategic competitor in trade, technology, geopolitics and ideology.
