Lessons from Shenzhen

Lessons from Shenzhen
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/7/12/nation/18273465&sec=nation

SHENZHEN (China): Malaysia can learn from Shenzhen and its free trade zones, said Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar.

“Two things we can learn from Shenzhen – planning and incentives,” the minister told newsmen on Tuesday after a briefing by Futian Free Trade Zone director Xiao Yuan Sheng.

Syed Hamid, who is leading a delegation to China, was impressed by how Shenzhen had evolved into an economic powerhouse.

“They started as a rural area with a population of about 20,000. It has grown to 12 million, comprising four million mobile population.

“They tend to focus on the type of industries they want to develop,” he said, adding that Shenzhen was very focused and targeted the World’s Top 500 companies.

Syed Hamid in turn briefed Xiao on the Iskandar Development Region project in Johor.

Shenzen is China's success story in capitalism. It started out as an experimental project, to open up a small area of the tightly controlled country to free trade, investment and industrialization. Within a relatively short period, the project has started to bear fruit. Funds started pouring in. Demand for local skilled workers increased, thus improving the competence of the local human resource. New jobs were created, value was added to the Chinese people.

This is certainly a lesson we can learn in our country. The Iskandar Development Region is a good effort and a unique proposition to foreign investment. If we have the political will to exempt the region from the harmful aspects of the NEP and other racial quotas/non-tariff barriers, then surely the Malaysian people will be able to benefit, as was shown in Shenzen's success.

What remains to be done by the government is the commitment to stick to the original plan of the IDR and not be cowed by the political goons from UMNO who are shouting for the rights of the ethnic Malays to be protected via 30% shareholding equity, specially favoured contractors/vendors, and general bureaucracy.