Three years ago, American businessman Raj Oswal traveled to the Chinese city of Shenzhen on behalf of a client. He was so impressed that he stayed and founded his own technology company there.
“You will not find many other cities in China or Asia that really embrace innovation like Shenzhen,” Oswal told CNBC, likening his decision to move there from California to his father’s decision to leave India. in the 1970s to study and make a career in the USA.
Oswal describes Shenzhen, a city of 17.5 million people on China’s southern border with Hong Kong, as a place full of “youthful optimism”.
Also, is a place full of money. A former fishing village, it has been transformed into a technology hub now known as Silicon Valley, China. And this year, along with Beijing and Shanghai, it entered the top 3 cities on the planet with the most billionaires, bypassing New York for the first time.
According to the Hurun Global Rich List, Beijing has the most billionaires of any city, with 144, while Shanghai has 121. There are 113 billionaires in Shenzhen, compared to 110 in New York. London completes the top five, with 101 billionaires.
The rise of Shenzhen began in 1980, when it was designated as China’s first special economic zone, as part of then-leader Deng Xiaoping’s plan to reform and open up the economy. This allowed the city to experiment with capitalism and the free market, in an effort to attract foreign investment.
From 1979 to 2021, Shenzhen’s GDP grew from $ 28 million to nearly $ 475 billion.
Today, the city is home to some of China’s largest technology companies, such as Huawei and Tencent. Last year, 2,500 new high-tech companies were established in Shenzhen, bringing the total to 17,000.
It is part of the so-called Greater Bay Area of China, an economic and business hub that aims to connect Shenzhen with eight other cities in Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macau.
Oswal saw the opportunities from the moment he set foot in the country, in 2019, when he was still in the taxi that took him from the airport.
“All the stereotypes I had about Chinese cities collapsed one by one with the modern and green urban scenery I saw on the street,” he says.
However, the city is also facing serious challenges from the outbreak of the pandemic, especially in recent weeks, as China is recording the worst wave of cases in the last 2 years. The government’s zero-tolerance policy is based on border closures, mass tests and strict lockdowns, with restrictive measures causing delays in factories and the port of Shenzhen, one of the largest in the world.
Money Review
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