Emergence of Special Economic Zones and Their Impact on Migration

Special economic zones (SEZs) have served as a major national development strategy worldwide over the past several decades. In the late twentieth century, China established six major SEZs as social laboratories for reform and opening-up, gradually emerging as a global leader in SEZ development. The early SEZs achieved remarkable progress in the 1980s, but their development trajectories diverged in the 1990s, with some SEZs undergoing significant industrial upgrading. The establishment and expansion of SEZs generated enormous job opportunities, thereby stimulating large-scale internal migration. In particular, the Shenzhen SEZ transformed from a small border town into China’s leading immigrant city, attracting millions of migrants ranging from unskilled laborers to skilled professionals essential for high-tech industries and modern services. However, several other SEZs became less attractive to labor flows in the 1990s as their markets contracted and comparative advantages waned. In addition, short-term and circular migration patterns were prevalent in China’s early SEZs. The experience of China’s SEZs presents a good opportunity for assessing how the emergence of SEZs influences internal migration. This chapter traces the evolution of China’s SEZs in the late twentieth century, uses Shenzhen as a primary case to analyze how the establishment and early development of SEZs reshaped internal migration dynamics, and concludes by reflecting on their broader political implications for labor mobility and migrant integration.