Shenzhen Speed

We crossed the border from Hong Kong into Shenzhen, China last Saturday. The crossing was a bit of a disaster. I realized that my backpack was missing and I had to go back to the University of Hong Kong to get it. The students and the professors went to the border without me, and I crossed alone about an hour after them. The crossing itself was very easy and fast, but I found out when I caught up with the group that one of our students had been turned away because of a typo on her visa. This is the kind of thing you hope doesn’t happen, but that there's no easy solution for when it does. She and one of the professors had to double back to Hong Kong and wait two days to get to the Chinese embassy for a fresh visa.

In the meantime, the rest of us got an introduction to the phenomenon known as “Shenzhen Speed.” A town that was a sleepy fishing village of about 30,000 in the early '80's (less than the year-round population of Chapel Hill, NC), a mere two decades has transformed Shenzhen into a towering metropolis of over 12 million. The “King of the Earth” skyscraper is noted not so much for its design as for the fact that it was constructed at a rate of one story every three days (total of 69 stories). The first and most successful special economic zone (SEZ), Shenzhen is now home to the world's largest factory complex, the Foxconn facility that employs 200,000 workers who make (among many products) every single iPod nano in the world. We visited the Foxconn facility yesterday, but of course what we saw and heard was far different from others.

On the streets of Shenzhen, you can still buy scallion pancakes from street vendors and get run over by a bicycle, just like every other city in China. However, you can also buy limitless numbers of knockoff designer brand products, depending on how much you want to get yelled at and fined by US Customs. You can also hear the sound of the next stage of global warming, as the horns from skyrocketing private car ownership sound off and drivers hit pedestrians (China has the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the world), cut each other off, and idle in the middle of intersections while they figure out where they want to go.

Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta

Hong Kong is located near the mouth of the Pearl River, which flows from Sichuan Province through southern China. The delta lies in Guangdong Province, where Deng Xiaopeng’s economic reforms began in 1981 with the establishment of the first “special economic zone” (SEZ) right next to the border with Hong Kong. This border already had great significance in Chinese economic history. In 1949, after the Communists rose to power, capital of all sorts drained out of the mainland and into Hong Kong. Money, talent, labor, experience, ideas, and energy brought a new level of activity to Hong Kong that the British alone had never achieved. Many refugees chose Hong Kong over Taiwan because it was more established. Their greatest priority was economic security, and this mentality continues in Hong Kong today. Though many yearn for democracy, the most important thing to the average Hong Kong person is the stability of the economy.

The Hong Kong economic juggernaut that started in 1950 attained new heights after the opening of China through the nearby SEZ. Where once garments and toys labeled “Made in Hong Kong” were common, production facilities shifted to the mainland to take advantage of cheaper land and labor. This produced a spatially bifurcated economy known as the “Front Shops, Back Factories” model. The capital, design, and leadership come from Hong Kong, while the raw materials and labor come from the Pearl River Delta. Hong Kong’s special role as a gateway to China became more important and enriching than ever, now that China was eager to export.

Today, however, exactly what the special role is for Hong Kong is less clear. When SARS struck Hong Kong in 2003, the economy took a nosedive. Commercial activity came to standstill. Today in Hong Kong, residents often remark on this or that place that they used to go to that closed during SARS, never to re-open. After the epidemic, what saved Hong Kong was the Pearl River Delta. At the request (more like desperate begging) of the Hong Kong government, the Chinese central government eased the border control between Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. A special, easy-to-get visa that allowed day trips to Hong Kong by mainland visitors was created. Now, the new middle and upper classes created in China by the economic reforms come to Hong Kong to spend hundreds of thousands of yuan on the very latest genuine designer merchandise. As in 1950, Hong Kong prospers from capital flowing over the border from China. This time, however, it’s a reciprocal relationship – Hong Kong is still a major source of the venture capital that supports the Pearl River Delta enterprises that are creating new wealth in China.

Why isn't Hong Kong like Bangkok?

Well, obviously there are a lot of reasons. This question was asked by a student concerning transportation in particular. Among the many large, compact megacities in Asia, Bangkok has become notorious for traffic congestion and air pollution. Drivers of Thai motorcycle taxis wear face masks when out on the street, and the mass transit system is dilapidated and under-used. On the other hand, while Hong Kong is not without air quality problems or rush hour jams, it is not only possible but easy to cross half of Hong Kong Island and head deep into Kowloon in less than half an hour (including transfers), for about $2 US, with no knowledge of Cantonese language or literacy in Chinese characters.

Density and land use mixing are both generators of traffic and prerequisites for transit. Bangkok and Hong Kong are both extraordinarily dense centers of housing, commerce, industry, culture, and government. So why is one choked with vehicles while the other, despite much more challenging geographic constraints (water, topography) provides extraordinary mobility? Clearly one part of the problem is simply inadequate transit development in Bangkok. The train system there was developed right before the 1998 Asian financial crisis, and the system’s implementation was crippled by the ensuing recession. Hong Kong’s system is partially privatized, and benefits from state-of-the-art infrastructure, scheduling, and fare collection. However, variations in transit quality alone don’t seem like enough to explain the globally sub-par transportation situation in Bangkok or the bold success of Hong Kong.

The answer lies in the realization that transportation planning is like a coin. On one side are the necessary conditions for mass mobility: land use density/mix and transit infrastructure. On the other side are the sufficient conditions to guarantee transit success: pedestrian safety, market-based anti-car policies, and transportation demand management. It must be easy and safe to walk, with a minimum of obstacles and threats from other transportation modes. Anti-car policies include scarce parking, expensive permitting, fuel taxes, and road pricing. And finally, transportation demand management enables and rewards frequent transit use through education, trip subsidy/discounts (at right, the Hong Kong 'octopus' card), and policies and programs targeting employers. When you turn over the coin in Bangkok, it is blank. In Hong Kong, you’d probably have to use one of those crazy micro-lasers that can write the whole Bible on a grain of rice to fit it all in.