How Migrants Made Markets: Shenzhen and China's Reform and Opening
Taomo Zhou, Associate Professor, National University of Singapore
White Hall - 106
10:10-11:25 am

Located immediately north of Hong Kong, Shenzhen is China’s first and most successful special economic zone (SEZ) and is often celebrated as the “social laboratory” of reform and opening. Official narratives credit visionary decisions by Beijing’s top leaders for transforming an impoverished border town into a global technology hub and the “Silicon Valley of the East.” This talk offers a more complicated account. I argue that Shenzhen represented a distinct post-socialist project of economic sovereignty in which migrants created markets for the state. Focusing on the Overseas Chinese Farm as a key zonal institution, the talk examines how two marginalized migrant groups—Southeast Asian Chinese refugees and ethnic minority women from China’s hinterland—were mobilized to drive Shenzhen’s development while being systematically excluded from its long-term gains. Through a comparative analysis of Guangming Overseas Chinese Livestock Farm’s transformation from a dairy operation into a biotechnology innovation hub and the parallel evolution of Overseas Chinese Town into a state-led cultural and tourism complex, the talk shows how migrant labor incubated technological innovation, generated export revenue, and advanced nationalist agendas, even as these communities were ultimately dispossessed through China’s dualistic citizenship regime and state-controlled land system.

Taomo Zhou (Ph.D. Cornell 2015) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies and Dean’s Chair in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. Her first book, Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2019), won a Foreign Affairs “Best Books of 2020” award and an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Taomo is currently working on her second book project tentatively entitled “Made in Shenzhen: A Global History of China’s First Special Economic Zone,” which is under advance contract with Stanford University Press. She is also researching on motherhood during the Cold War.