City of Youth

Since ancient times, people have dreamed of a City of Youth, where the population never ages, and where any outsider who comes to live there will remain forever young. They probably did not have in mind, however, the "agelessness" of today's Shenzhen, China. Lying just over the border from Hong Kong, this "instant city" has grown in just over twenty-five years from a small fishing village to a sprawling metropolitan region approaching ten million people. As the first Special Economic Zone in China, it was a model for the capitalistic "market reforms" and "opening to the world" initiated in the late 1970s by Deng Xiaoping. One of its most striking aspects is the low average age of its residents, which has hovered for years at around twenty-seven. This stands in ever sharper contrast to China as a whole, where the population is rapidly aging.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website

Archaeology · China · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Geography · Metropolitan area · Population · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Demography · History · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies