With the entry of China into the World Trade Organization (WTO),
Shenzhen City plans to go above and beyond the Chinese government's
commitments for opening up, to become an example of success in the
new market economy, according to Mayor Yu Youjun.
Shenzhen City, in south China's Guangdong Province, is one of the
country's five special economic zones (SEZ) benefiting from
preferential policies.
Yu
said they have been working hard to take the lead in opening up to
overseas investors in fields ranging from banking, securities,
insurance, logistics, commerce and intermediate service to
tourism.
"Amid fiercer international competition, Shenzhen will continue to
take bold steps in carrying out in-depth reforms and making new
breakthroughs," said the mayor. "The most urgent task at present is
to adapt the government administrative methods to the WTO
requirements through reform, and to form a standardized and
improved socialist market economic mechanism."
According to Yu, Shenzhen removed 277 items requiring approval from
the city government in a bid to improve the efficiency of
government work last year.
Economic specialists say China used to introduce many preferential
policies in its SEZs, but these policies will be popularized in
other areas of the country in the wake of the expanded opening-up
in China, especially after WTO entry
.
"SEZs are still encouraged to take bold steps in economic
experiments and to offer practical experience for other Chinese
regions," said the specialists.
Su
Dongbin, head of the Shenzhen Institute of Taiwan and Hong Kong
Economies, said Shenzhen has grown into a region which enjoys the
highest level of opening-up and market-oriented economy through two
decades of development.
"China's entry into the WTO serves as a new accelerator for
Shenzhen to further improve its market economic mechanism and to
speed up the city's adaptation to the world," said Su.
The world has been impressed by China's successful operation of
SEZs. Shenzhen, for instance, which was just a small town when it
was chosen as China's first special economic zone to pilot the
country's reform and opening-up drive 22 years ago, has now grown
into a boomtown, which is placed fourth among Chinese cities in
overall economic strength.
By
the year of 2001, Shenzhen's gross domestic product (GDP) was 195.4
billion yuan (about US$23.5 billion) and the city's per capita GDP
was 5,237 US dollars, which placed it as the first in the country
in terms of per capita GDP.
In
addition to creating a miracle of fast economic growth, Shenzhen
has also made initial progress in experimenting with the
establishment of a market economy and has led the country by
introducing paid transfer of state-owned land use right, a
securities market, as well as reforming the government approval
system.
Establishment of a market economic mechanism in Shenzhen has
created a fine market environment for overseas investors. By now,
over 80 of the world's 500 top companies have settled down in this
southern Chinese city. Shenzhen has also become one of China's key
exporters and one of the country's most important ports of foreign
trade.
To
greet the challenges of economic globalization and knowledge
economy, Shenzhen has kept adjusting economic structure over the
past years and turned high-tech industries into the city's major
powerhouse for economic growth.
In
the past decade, Shenzhen has realized an annual growth of 50
percent in high-tech industries and by 2001, output value of the
city's high-tech commodities amounted to 132.1 billion yuan (about
US$15.92 billion), accounting for about 46 percent of the city's
total industrial output value.
According to Shenzhen's new development goal, it will lead the
country by realizing modernization and turning itself into a
showcase of socialism with Chinese characteristics in five to ten
years.
(Xinhua News
Agency September 29, 2002)