Tag Archives: history

突破：what is a break through?

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Lately, I have been thinking about how each of Shenzhen’s six officially lauded break throughs appears as an instance of slogan warfare. Concomitantly, I have thinking about creative destruction, both Marxist and neo-liberal variants. Roughly speaking, Marx defined creative destruction as the necessary destruction of property and means of production (including social relations) so that new wealth could be generated. In contrast, neo-liberal economists like Joseph Schumpeter have tended to define creative destruction in terms of innovation. A question of emphasis that also beats at the heart of moral value: Marx witnessed destruction and its fallout; Schumpeter saw innovation and its benefits.

So below, a brief survey of Shenzhen breakthroughs to track the shift from socialist to neoliberal political morality. As Marx and Schumpeter indicate, none of these break throughs have been morally neutral, legitimating both new forms of inequality and opportunity. Continue reading →

Historic traces – Xixiang Qilou (骑楼)

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Buildings connected with archways, qilou (骑楼) are architectural symbols of Cantonese urban modernity. They first appeared in the early 20th century, when Guangzhou razed its city wall in order to expand streets for commerce and modern forms of transportation, but the style quickly spread throughout the Pearl River Delta. Some say that qilou were a continuation of an indigenous Cantonese architecture style, protecting pedestrians from both the sun and the rain. Others claim that qilou were a Cantonese adaptation of western architectural forms. Nevertheless, what remains clear is that like the Paris arcades or Venetian sotto portico, qilou enabled shopkeepers to display their wares and pedestrians to stroll by and window shop, creating the vibrant street cultures that we associate with these cities.

The former county seat of New Baoan County, Xixiang was one of the first areas outside the Shenzhen second line to urbanize. However, unlike guannei, where urban educated architects and planners designed with an eye to contemporary western forms, Shenzhen villagers designed with an eye to Guangzhou and Hong Kong indigenous urban forms. Consequently, on some of the streets in Xixang it is still possible to stumble upon contemporary adaptations of the qilou. Although, like Guangzhou’s early 20th century qilou, Xixiang’s 1980s qilou will most likely be razed to build air conditioned malls, further privatizing street culture. Nevertheless, glimpses of a few corners from Xixiang street life suggest the variety of possible urban forms.

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Just FYI, in Dongmen, some qilou have been preserved during the construction of the Dongmen pedestrian commercial area. Also, there are some qilou along the older sections of Nanxin Road, just beyond Nantou, the county seat of Baoan during the Ming, Qing, and Republican eras.

Utopian Shenzhen, 1978-1982

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Below I summarize thoughts about the importance of Shenzhen in shaping China’s post Mao utopianism.

In the heady rush of hyperbole, it is tempting to describe the SEZ’s first thiry years as the – Unprecidented! Miraculous! Epic! – jump of a lowly county from the lowest escholon in the state apparatus to one of the highest. More prosaically, the systemic re-invention of Baoan County as Shenzhen Municipality took place over a series of administrative adjustments and concomitant reallocation of authority, responsibilities, and fundamentally, rights to the national allocation of people, services, and goods. From 1978-1982, the Central Government and/or Guangdong Province restructured Baoan County four times. Each restructuring had a different ideological meaning and aimed to created a different form of post Mao utopia. These ideological differences – more precisely different understandings of the utopian content of modernization – continue to vex the development of Shenzhen.

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that was then

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Wandered over to the Shenzhen Bay sports stadium, where people took pictures of themselves in front of universiade installations and topiary. To give a sense of what is meant by “Shenzhen speed (深圳速度)”, I am posting pictures of that particular bit of earth, below.

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Importantly and often overlooked, hidden in plain sight behind painted walls and temporary green space, the bit of earth just south of the pageantry has gone to seed, awaiting post-universiade construction.

Old Shenzhen

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Last Friday, took friends on an almost tour of Shenzhen — almost because the tour was planned, but then it rained and so we drank coffee instead and talked about what we would have seen… Anyway, here’s the point. I mentioned some of the “really old” areas and when asked, “how old?” answered, “25-28 years.” And the reply was, “Hmm. That’s not old in Europe.”

It’s not old in Shenzhen either. There are Ming Dynasty ruins to be walked in Zhongshan Park, next to Nantou (or Jiujie) and there are traces of 1,000 years of salt and oysters to be pursued; archaeological digs suggest pre-historical human settlements in the area. However, in terms of post Mao reforms, 1980 architecture is as old as it gets and the first compounds were not finished until 1981-82.  Continue reading →

the way we were

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Going through old speeches of Deng Xiaoping, I came across his 1974 address to a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, using Third World theory that Zhou Enlai had presented at Bandung 1955. Those were the days, when socialist utopianism inspired the oppressed Peoples of the Third World to roar their anger and retake what had been taken. Of course, two years after Deng’s New York gig, Zhou Enlai and then Mao Zedong would pass, the Gang of Four would be vanquished in a bloodless transition of power (if we don’t take the PLAs one-year foray into Vietnam as a concession to hardliners), and Deng Xiaoping would emerge as the new leader of the People’s Republic of China, employing cats of various colors to jumpstart the economy first in Shekou (1978) and then in Shenzhen (1979), with the SEZ established in 1980.

And yet. As events in the Middle East force us to reflect on the resentments that inequality and oppression foster, Maoist language resonates. And yes, Socialism with Chinese characteristics would qualify for condemnation as “that country which styles itself socialist” if only because the USSR, the other country that styled itself socialist disbanded as Gorbachev, Reagan, Thatcher, and Deng renegotiated the post Cold War order. Memory snippets from the Marxist Internet Archive.

[…] In this situation of “great disorder under heaven,” all the political forces in the world have undergone drastic division and realignment through prolonged trials of strength and struggle. A large number of Asian, African and Latin American countries have achieved independence one after another and they are playing an ever greater role in international affairs. As a result of the emergence of social-imperialism, the socialist camp which existed for a time after World War II is no longer in existence. Owing to the law of the uneven development of capitalism, the Western imperialist bloc, too, is disintegrating. Judging from the changes in international relations, the world today actually consists of three parts, or three worlds, that are both interconnected and in contradiction to one another. The United States and the Soviet Union make up the First World. The developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and other regions make up the Third World. The developed countries between the two make up the Second World… Continue reading →

Delta restructuring, or the politics of economic expansion

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In the  Chinese administration of economic inequality, higher rankings may be converted into better opportunities. Indeed, that’s the point: to grow the stronger and pull everyone else into the future with you (which is one possible interpretation of the Shanghai debate about “adjusting” the economic dance of cities that constitute the Yangtse Dragon). Anyway, the ranking of each of Guangdong’s 21 地市 cities are:

1. Guangzhou; 2. Shenzhen; 3. Foshan; 4. Zhuhai; 5. Shantou; 6. Shaoguan; 7. Heyuan; 8. Meizhou; 9. Huizhou; 10. Shanwei; 11. Dongguan; 12. Zhongshan; 13. Jiangmen; 14. Yangjiang; 15. Zhejian; 16. Maoming; 17. Zhaoqing; 18. Chaozhou; 19. Jieyang; 20. Yunfu; 21. Qingyuan.

This ranking scheme interests me because it formalizes the power shifts that have occurred in the PRD as a result of Reform and Opening. According to Governor Huang Huahua, Guangdong has all sorts of plans for the next year (and yes, the year begins after Chinese New Year, no matter what the rest of the planet is up to), including deepening the integration of the Pearl River Delta, which is  Guangdong’s equivalent of an economic dragon and includes Hong Kong by way of Shen Kong connections.

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What is Shenzhen’s cultural history?

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I have added a page of links to Noted posts that provide an introduction into debates about what constitutes SZ’s cultural history. The question interests because “Shenzhen lacks cultural history” has been a critique made by Chinese and Western visitors to the city. However, in the new post 30th anniversary era, constructing a history for SZ has become a key government initiative. Whether imperial or state history should constitute Shenzhen’s core history defines these debates. Of note, the more tradition (especially neo-confucianism) gains momentum in Shenzhen, the more pre-Deng cultural history is valorized as a source of civic identity.

Clicking either history or shenzhen identity in tag cloud on the right side of the screen will bring up many more posts in chronological order, such that you can track my changing interests.

Early Forms of Shen Kong

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These past few days, I have been thinking about new forms of Shen Kong integration. Shen Kong (深港) is an abbreviation of Shenzhen-Hong Kong, which is frequently used as an adjective, but may also refer to the two city area.In fact, these past few years, Shen Kong collaborations have included: a 24-7 border crossing, linking the subway systems of the two cities, loosening the travel restrictions on Shenzhen residents for visiting Hong Kong, the architecture biennial, and planning the Qianhai Cooperation Zone and the Lok Ma Chau Loop. In this post, I give a brief contextualization of Shen Kong history in order to explore how power balances have been shifting in the Pearl River Delta since 1980. Continue reading →

over 350,000 illegal buildings in shenzhen?

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I have been reading and translating texts about the latest effort to clean up (raze and rebuild) urban villages to conform to changing definitions of what constitutes a modern global city, which is, of course, the goal of Shenzhen’s 2010-2020 overall urban plan. Below an excerpt from an online report on the results of a survey to catalogue all the illegal buildings in the urban villages. Of note: illegal status is defined historically, in other words: buildings become illegal over time (either they become dangerous or come into conflict with changing codes). Worth remembering: Shenzhen’s urban villages occupy roughly 4% of Shenzhen’s actual land, but are home to an estimated 50% of the population, and generate a significant percentage of the local economy.

去年6月2日，《深圳市人大常委会关于农村城市化历史遗留违法建筑的处理决定》（以下简称《决定》）颁布实施，为了搭上这个政策的末班车，深圳掀起了新一轮违法抢建高潮。按照此决定要求，要对全市违法建筑进行全面普查，建立违法建筑台账和数据库，并在一年内出台《决定》的实施办法。今年以来，违法建筑的信息普查工作在全市各区全面展开，实施办法的制定工作也在紧锣密鼓的进行之中。

截至今年6月2日，全市基本完成了信息普查的数据录入工作。根据信息普查数据统计结果，全市农村城市化历史遗留违法建筑普查总量为35.7万栋，建筑面积为3.92亿平方米，用地面积131平方公里；已申报了34.8万栋，申报率97.63%。与此同时，6月8日，《决定》的实施办法已经获得市政府常务会议原则通过，下一步获得市人大常委会通过后便可实施。

Translation: June 2, last year [2009], the “Shenzhen Municipality People’s Congress Standing Committee’s Decision for Handling Illegal Buildings Left from the History of Rural Urbanization” (below “Decision”) was promulgated, opening another surge of illegal construction in order to take advantage of this policy. According to Decision requirements, there would be a thorough inspection of all illegal buildings in the city to establish an archive of illegal building costs and numbers, to be finished within one year. To date, inspection of illegal buildings has been conducted throughout the city, even as the work of documentation has been accomplished with much fanfare.

By June 2, this year [2010], the basic work of gathering information and recording statistics had been completed. According to the survey results, there are 357,000 illegal buildings left from the history of rural urbanization. These buildings have a total area of 392 million square meters and take up 131 square kilometers of land. 348,000 buildings have already been reported for a report ratio of 97.63%. At the same time on June 8, the implementation of the Decision was in principal approved by the Standing Committee of the Municipal Government and will next go to the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress for final ratification.  You Xiping, Xinlang Real Estate, August 17, 2010