China opens up to capitalism
Witness History
BBC
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 May 2022
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
PHOTO: A giant poster of Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen, the first of China's special economic zones (Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Lucy Burns. |
| 0:41.0 | Today I'm bringing you the story of a new economic policy that changed |
| 0:45.8 | the world. In May 1980, the Chinese government declared the city of Shenzhen to be a special |
| 0:52.3 | economic zone. |
| 0:53.0 | This allowed capitalist economic activity in the country |
| 0:57.0 | for the first time since the Communist Revolution. Shenzhen was like a big village with some factories in it. |
| 1:07.0 | Shenzhen was like a big village with some factories in it. |
| 1:10.0 | It felt like people were putting up new buildings all the time. |
| 1:14.0 | This is Yong Yaa. She was four years old when she moved to the Special Economic Zone. |
| 1:20.7 | It was 1984, the factory where my mother worked relocated to Shenzhen, so we had to move. |
| 1:26.1 | We just got sent here. |
| 1:27.4 | We didn't choose to come. |
| 1:28.9 | The Chinese government has been relaxing restrictions on its citizens' activities and a new and unique |
| 1:34.7 | Chinese system of capitalism is beginning to emerge. The special economic zones, |
| 1:39.5 | there were four of them on the Chinese coast, were part of an experiment by the Chinese government, moving away from a planned |
... |
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