A well-developed higher education system is indispensable for the sustainable development of a city. In just four decades, Shenzhen has leaped from being a remote border town of Guangdong and Hong Kong to a modern megacity with unprecedented speed.

On Aug 18, 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued an Opinion on Supporting Shenzhen's Pioneering Demonstration Zone of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. It has not only positioned Shenzhen as the leader of development in the Greater Bay Area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. It has also granted Shenzhen the great responsibility of constructing a pioneering zone with Chinese characteristics and growing into a global benchmark city with competitiveness, innovation and outstanding influence.

However, the “short board” that constrains Shenzhen's growth, the “bottleneck” of its urban sustainable development, are its education and healthcare systems. In particular, the state of higher education resources in Shenzhen does not match its status and comprehensive strength in the country.

As a result, Shenzhen is seeing an awkward coexistence of “innovation and entrepreneurship highland” and “education lowland”. To this end, Shenzhen urgently needs to develop a high-level higher education system that matches the pioneering position the central government has endowed it with.

An innovative global city must not only have high-quality economic output, but also have high-quality talents cultivation. After all, the three most influential bay areas in the world: the New York Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Tokyo Bay Area, are all places where world-famous universities gather.

First, the Tokyo Bay Area, with one-third of Japan's population, has 263 higher education institutions and more than 1.27 million registered university students (2013). Top universities such as University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Waseda University, Keio University and Hitotsubashi University are all in the bay area. Concentration of both industrial districts and higher education institutes is the secret behind sustainable development of the Tokyo Bay Area.

Next, the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States, though, with a population of only 7.7 million, nine of the top 100 universities in the world, such as Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Davis. A cluster of world-class universities, too, have come up around the bay area: California Institute of Technology, University of Southern California, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California, Santa Barbara, University of California, Irvine, University of California, San Diego, University of California, Riverside, etc..

Then, The New York Bay Area, with a population of 20 million, represented by New York City, Newark, and New Jersey, has formed the world’s top Ivy League Schools cluster, both centering in New York and exerting strong radiation and influence on nearby places. For example, Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, etc. are in New York State, and Princeton University, Yale University, Harvard University, and MIT are around New York. Five out of eight American Ivy League Schools are in the New York bay area.

In comparison, Shenzhen, a new city positioned to be the benchmark for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, is the only first-tier city without local 985 and 211 universities. None of the the 42 “Double First-Class” universities ( “Double First-Class” is an national programme for China’s higher education excellency) selected by China’s Ministry of Education are in Shenzhen. Shenzhen’s shortage of higher education resources stands out, even when compared to second-tier cities. Of course, a well-developed higher education system in a city or a region requires long-term investment. As people often say: “It takes 10 years to grow trees, but 100 to cultivate talents”.

Building high-quality higher education in one area is not something that can be completed overnight.

The world over, a city's sustainable development and outstanding innovation capabilities hinge on first-class universities and institutes. A world-class university, whether providing general education as British Newman, specialized education as German Humboldt, or social service education of US Wisconsin, is the most important place to discover and produce knowledge.

At present, though a city of innovation, let's face it, Shenzhen lacks sufficient higher education resources. And these cannot be enhanced by “attracting investment” in short order, as it did to develop other industries. The improvement of higher education and research capacity is a long-term process, therefore Shenzhen must attach importance to the introduction of international and domestic famous universities and research institutions, while creating a friendly environment for their long-term development.

Also, as a pioneering city of socialism with Chinese characteristics, to upgrade its higher education rapidly, Shenzhen should take advantage of the policy innovation to attract and adopt global advanced strategies, and foster increment on the basis of the current high-quality higher education resources.

First of all, China’s domestic "Double First-Class" universities are greatly interested in establish campuses in Shenzhen, for the purpose of observing emerging technologies and industrial innovation.

Second, the incremental advantage of developing higher education in Shenzhen is very obvious. As a city of innovation, the two main subjects of higher education, teachers and students, come from and go into the cities’ development, moving like running water to constantly inject energy into the city’s higher education improvement. It will help make up the shortfall of research capacity in Shenzhen in a shorter period of time.

Third, the construction of high-quality higher education in Shenzhen should help attract global resources looking for a base. Based on the wave of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution", Shenzhen can build its constructions using emerging technologies, focusing on the construction of "new liberal arts", "new engineering" and "new medical science".

Finally, the development of high-quality higher education in Shenzhen should deal with several relationships: first, the relationship between the Shenzhen Demonstration Zone and the development concepts of the mainland universities; second, the balance between the development of science and engineering and the humanities; and third, the relationship between incremental development and stock optimization of education resources. That is to say, Shenzhen should balance the talents from “siphon effect” and from original campus, to seek a win-win situation between increments and stocks.

Mi Jianing is a professor at the School of Management at Harbin Institute of Technology; Sun Tao is a professor at the Zhou Enlai School of Government at Nankai University. 

The authors contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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