China's reform & opening
What it is
The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978 confirmed Deng Xiaoping's leadership and the policy of 'reform and opening up', redirecting the Communist Party from Maoist class struggle towards economic modernisation. Reforms decollectivised agriculture, allowed private enterprise, opened the country to foreign investment through Special Economic Zones such as Shenzhen from 1980, and from the 1980s and 1990s created urban land-leasing markets. China's economy grew at near-double-digit rates for decades. Hundreds of millions of people moved from countryside to city.
Why it matters
Reform and opening set off the largest and fastest urbanisation in history, building scores of new and vastly enlarged cities and decisively shifting the global balance of urban population and construction towards China.
Plans it shaped
- Shenzhen SEZ Master Plan (1982–2010)
- Wuhan Optics Valley (1990s–)
- Shanghai Master Plan 1999–2020 (1999–2020)
- Harbin Songbei New District (2000s–)
- Nanjing Hexi New Town (2002–)
- Lingang New City (Shanghai) (2002–)
- Songdo International Business District (2003–)
- Beijing Olympic Green Masterplan (2003–2008)
- Ordos Kangbashi (2003–)
- Beijing Master Plan (2004–2020) (2004–2020)
- Hefei Binhu New District (2005–)
- Hengqin New Area (Zhuhai) (2009–)