SCMP has a long and winding report today comparing Shanghai and Shenzhen, posing the question of which will lead the country in the next stage of its growth, as both have been given new briefs recently to accelerate reforms. To our minds, such analysis misses a key point – that China is a big country. Two cities so far apart are likely to have very little overlap: Shanghai will drive the Yangtze River Delta (which still hasn’t come up with a sexier name like the Greater Bay Area), while Shenzhen will drive the Pearl River Delta.
The other major difference between the two is that Shenzhen has a better support team: Hong Kong to provide capital flows, Guangzhou to provide administrative drive, Dongguan to take overflowing high-tech manufacturing capacity, and the entire west bank to provide lebensraumfor the city’s expansion (see today’s high-speed railway story). Shanghai has cities like Nanjing, Ningbo, Hangzhou and Suzhou, for sure, but little of the integration work that has already gone into tying them together like has happened in the GBA.
Shanghai has some way to catch up as an engine of growth for its own part of China without having to worry about competing with Shenzhen.
Moreover, whatever one might say about Shanghainese entrepreneurial spirit, it doesn’t have two things: Cantonese cultural ties with its neighbors, and, perhaps more importantly the bestowal of permission by Beijing to ramp up convertibility of the Renminbi (see our D-RMB story from yesterday).
Ask any Shenzhenrenabout competition from Shanghai and they will likely look at you incredulously. Guangzhou is the city they plan to stay ahead of, and Hong Kong is the city they plan to overtake. All in good time.
