SEZ development satisfactory
World famous Italian correspondent Oriana Fallaci asked Deng a question during an interview in the fall of 1980, when the China’s first SEZs sprang up to catch the attention of Western media.
“Bringing foreign capital into China will inevitably give rise to private investment. Won’t this lead to miniaturized capitalism?”
A confident Deng told her that opening up to the outside world could never affect China’s system of socialist public ownership of the means of production, and absorbing foreign capital and technology and even allowing foreigners to construct plants in China could only play a complementary role to China’s efforts to develop the productive forces in a socialist society.
“Of course, it will bring some decadent capitalist influences into China. We are aware of this possibility. It’s nothing to be afraid of,” Deng said.
Thirty years later, Shenzhen’s GDP skyrocketed to 680 billion yuan (US$97 billion) in 2007 from less than 200 million yuan in 1979, facts proving Deng to be a great man of great foresight.
(Li Jing)