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1979 was sparsely populated and almost entirely rural. The region'

s largest city today, Shenzhen, was then a relatively small backwater market town (Figure 1). Impetus for the dramatic growth of both the city and the region came in 1980, when the central government designated Shenzhen as China'

s largest Special Economic Zone (SEZ). In essence, local SEZ governments were enabled free market economic policies C and to accept foreign investment C to a much greater degree than the remainder of the country. As the

1996 Chinese government paper Development of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone explains: The major role assigned by the central government to Shenzhen was that it become the nation'

s '

window'

to the outside world, its'

area of experimentation'

in the process of reform and development of the economic system, and a demonstration to the rest of the country. … Shenzhen was successful primarily because of its special preferential reform policies… to both encourage and absorb foreign investment relating to taxation, land use, foreign exchange, marketing of products, entry and exit, economic autonomy (Li, 1996). The experimental basis of the Shenzhen SEZ was not the only aspect that made it and the ensuing PRD megacity markedly different from other boomtowns in the developing world. Unlike the latter, the growth of the SEZ was from the outset planned for attracting and developing business, with re........