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Witness History: China opens up to capitalism

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Shenzhen - Special Economic Zone

04/10/2019 GMT

China opens up to capitalism

BBC World Service - Witness History, China opens up to capitalism

How China's Communist rulers established the country's first Special Economic Zones

How China's Communist rulers established the country's Special Economic Zones in May 1980, allowing capitalist activity for the first time since the 1949 revolution.

In May 1980 China allowed capitalist activity for the first time since the Communist Revolution, in four designated cities known as the Special Economic Zones. The most successful was Shenzhen, which grew from a mainly rural area specialising in pigs and lychees to one of China's biggest cities. In 2017 Lucy Burns spoke to Yong Ya, a musician who has lived in Shenzhen since the 1980s, and to ethnographer Mary Ann O'Donnell.

IMAGE: Pedestrians and cars stream by a giant poster of Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen, the first of China's special economic zones. TOMMY CHENG/AFP/Getty Images

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