It’s official, at least 20 million people live in Shenzhen. According to Shenzhen Secreatary, Ma Xingrui, the city’s population (as of December 2015) stats were: population with Shenzhen hukou =3.67 million; population with long-term residency = 10.77 million, and; administrative population = 20 million.
Today, I’m translating a recent update from the Shenzhen Government online–Shenzhen administrative divisions. For those interested in who belongs where, it is an amazingly useful collection of maps. It also introduces the ongoing administrative history of Shenzhen, providing key dates in administrative restructuring. This translation interests as much for what it includes as what it does not; Shekou is notably absent from the administrative history of Shenzhen and this particular version of municipal historiography. Moreover, although this historiography shows when the government apparatus has made grabs to regulate and standardize local production, its unclear what happened in the outer districts when all this inner re-districting was going on. In other words, the official historiography of Shenzhen’s administrative history seems a straight-forward and uncomplicated process. Continue reading
Yesterday morning, the Shekou Community Welfare Fund received word that Yuan Geng, former CEO of China Merchants Shekou had passed. They immediately set to organizing a memorial, which was held on January 31, 2016 at 8 pm. The official memorial was held earlier in the afternoon at the Shekou China Merchants Museum, which is the official mourning hall for the departed leader. “The difference,” one participant commented, “between the two memorials was obvious. At the official memorial, people were waiting for Shenzhen Party Secretary Ma Xingrui and Mayor Xu Xin to arrive and pay their respects. In contrast, at the Shekou Community memorial, Old Shekou people came to mourn the end of an era.”
Shenzhen Noted 