Shenzhen to remove boundary around economic zone

The State Council issued a guideline on Monday approving the removal of the line that used to mark the boundary between the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the rest of the city.

The boundary line, set up in 1982 with wire fences that ran for 84.6 kilometers, marked the geographic boundary for China's first special economic zone inside Shenzhen in 1980.

The guideline urges the city government of Shenzhen and the provincial government of Guangdong to take this as an opportunity to further optimize Shenzhen's city design, improve public transportation, enhance environmental and ecological protection, and gradually improve public services and facilities.

It stressed that the next step in the development of Shenzhen should realize high-quality urbanization, accumulating experiences for big city design and operation in the new era.

Qu Jian, deputy director of the China Development Institute based in Shenzhen, said the removal of the line is due to the city's dazzling rapid development in the past few decades.

"Preferential policies such as a tax reduction for the Special Economic Zone in Shenzhen were gradually canceled by the year 2000, and since that time the idea of a special economic zone has no longer existed. Yet the boundary line does have its unique historic meaning, as it marked China's first window, or trial run, for reform and opening up," said Qu, who has worked in Shenzhen since 1992.

"The line has resulted in heavy traffic jams during peak commuting hours, as today about 70 percent of the Shenzhen population works in the previous economic zone, but many of them live outside the zone," Qu said.

According to Qu, the development plan for Shenzhen originally envisioned a population of 1 million. Figures from the Shenzhen bureau of statistics show that the population in Shenzhen reached 11.38 million in 2015.

He said that urban facilities outside the line still lag behind those inside the Special Economic Zone, and the next key step after the boundary line is removed is to ensure a proper and balanced development for the whole city.