New practice

Guo says the city government must expand grass-roots democracy, encourage greater public responsibility and enhance transparency of government affairs.

From this year, the city authority is ending life-long employment for all new government employees and plans, over the next 30 years, to transfer the city's 40,000 government officials in service from de facto life-long employment to labor contracts.

This means the breaking of "iron rice bowl," a legacy from the planned economy now reserved mainly for civil servants.

Meanwhile, non-government social organizations have been encouraged to grow to improve the efficiency of public services and constrain the unnecessary sprawl of government affiliates.

"The booming Chinese economy will for sure lead to explosive growth of the middle class," Guo predicts. "When that day comes, people will be more aware of their rights, demand the building of a market economy guaranteed by the rule of law and express more diverse individual opinions."

In response to the concerns, Wang Rong likens the development of an internationalized modern city to building a house.

"To make the house solid and attractive, we need to lay the foundation with a much higher efficiency in the use of energy and resources, develop high-end manufacturing into the framework and use fair and quality social welfare as the roof," says Wang.

Unlike earlier reforms with their focus on dragging Chinese out of poverty, says Tang Gang, vice president of the Party School of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, Shenzhen's future reform must take into account both economic and social development.

"As I understand it, reform tasks in the more complicated social fields are more crucial," he says.

The policies of "opening-up" should be redefined to boost not just foreign investment and trade, but also closer regional collaboration within the country, says Tan.

This innovation is essential if Shenzhen wants to fulfill its new duties as a "regional economic axis."

"Shenzhen is not enough to take the world's most populous nation into modernity," says Tan. "If Shenzhen can find a sustained and harmonious way of developing into a mega city, China's urbanization and modernity will be greatly accelerated."