August 26 marks the 45th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

Since its rebirth as an SEZ in 1980, the once tiny coastal fishing village in south China's Guangdong Province has grown into the third-largest city in the country by economy and an international metropolis housing well-known Chinese brands like Huawei, BYD and DJI.

Numbers speak

Over the past four decades, Shenzhen has pulled off a remarkable development miracle. Its GDP soared from 270 million yuan (around $38 million) in 1980 to 3.68 trillion yuan in 2024, a staggering increase of more than 10,000 times.

Along with its booming economic development, Shenzhen has in recent years witnessed the flourishing emerging industries related to AI, 5G and drones. Official statistics showed that there are more than 4.5 million business entities in the city, including 25,000 national high-tech enterprises, averaging 12 per square kilometer.

Among them are 11,000 specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with 1,025 recognized as national-level "little giant" enterprises, which are specialized SMEs that excel in niche markets, drive innovation, tackle frontier technologies, and help strengthen industrial chains.

Meanwhile, the added value of Shenzhen's strategic emerging industries increased from 1.01 trillion yuan in 2019 to 1.56 trillion yuan in 2024, accounting for 42.3 percent of the city's GDP, up from 37.7 percent.

Shenzhen also boosted its port and marine economy. In 2024, Shenzhen Port's container throughput grew by 11.7 percent year-on-year, securing its position as the world's fourth busiest container port. And in the same year, the total output value of the marine economy reached 540.9 billion yuan, accounting for 14.7 percent of the city's GDP and growing by 5.8 percent, positioning it as a globally influential maritime center.

Expanding and opening up on all fronts

As one of the pioneers of China's reform and opening up, Shenzhen has seen a faster pace of opening up in recent years, driven by the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and other initiatives.

China unveiled the outline development plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in 2019, which is hailed as a new attempt to break new ground in pursuing opening up on all fronts by building an international first-class bay area and world-class city cluster that is vibrant and highly innovative, with an optimized industrial structure and a smooth flow of various factors.

"The policy environment here (in Shenzhen) is excellent, and I came to realize my entrepreneurial dream," said Shi Yuanyuan, who established a medical technology company in Shenzhen this May.

Shi's company aims to leverage the scientific research, industrial and policy advantages of both Shenzhen and Hong Kong to accelerate the clinical translation and industrial application of cell therapies.

Shi is one of the many overseas entrepreneurs who have moved from Hong Kong to Qianhai in Shenzhen.

In June, China released a set of guidelines highlighting a new batch of measures for Shenzhen to strengthen the integration of innovation, industrial, capital, and talent chains and explore new cooperation in the GBA.

Shenzhen's path of opening up is anchored in its ties with Hong Kong and Macao while extending its reach to the world.

Shenzhen has been advancing a series of institutional innovations to promote high-level opening up, such as supporting foreign investment in the biomedical sector and continuously strengthening the protection of foreign investment.

Over the past five years, Shenzhen has seen the establishment of 33,000 new foreign-invested enterprises, accounting for approximately 14.6 percent of the national total, with actual utilized foreign capital reaching about $40 billion.

According to statistics from Shenzhen Customs, in the first half of this year, Shenzhen's total import and export volume reached 2.17 trillion yuan, accounting for 9.9 percent of the nation's total during the same period.

Since 1993, Shenzhen has maintained the largest export scale in China for 32 consecutive years.

Zheng Yongnian, director of the Advanced Institute of Global and Contemporary China Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), told China Newsweek that the city's next phase of development must be positioned within a global context and that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area still possesses tremendous potential for growth in comparion with the development experiences of other bay areas around the world.

Noting that Shenzhen serves as a hub for technological innovation and manufacturing while Hong Kong is a center for financial services, Zheng said the complementary strengths and mutual reinforcement between the two cities require Shenzhen to play the role of a "core engine" driving this synergy.