Pre-1979 Bao'an County: The Baseline Conditions of a Fishing Village

To understand the meteoric rise of Shenzhen from a county-level backwater to a global tech and financial hub in four decades, one must first ground the analysis in the precise baseline conditions of Bao’an County on the eve of its 1979 redesign as China’s first special economic zone (SEZ). Far from the popular myth of an empty, undeveloped fishing village, Bao’an in 1979 was a densely settled, institutionally structured, and geographically strategic rural county with a 1,800-year history of administrative governance, a population of 310,000, and an economy deeply integrated—albeit informally—with the neighboring British colony of Hong Kong. The official 1979 statistical bulletin of the Bao’an County People’s Government recorded a total GDP of 196 million yuan, a per capita GDP of 613 yuan (equivalent to roughly 170 USD at the official 1979 exchange rate of 1.85 yuan per USD), and an employment structure in which 90% of the working population was engaged in agriculture and fishery. These numbers, while starkly low by contemporary standards, obscure a far more complex baseline of latent potential, structural constraints, and informal economic dynamism that would shape every subsequent phase of Shenzhen’s development.

Geographic and Natural Endowments: The Pearl River Delta’s Overlooked Border Node

Bao’an’s geographic position was its most underappreciated asset in 1979, a product of millennia of alluvial deposition and imperial border administration that placed it at the exact intersection of three critical economic zones: the British colony of Hong Kong to the south, the provincial capital Guangzhou to the north, and the Pearl River Delta’s East River basin to the east. The county shared a 241-kilometer border with Hong Kong, split between the 87-kilometer Shenzhen River channel to the north and 154 kilometers of undulating hillside and coastal border to the east and west, including the historic salt-producing peninsula of Yantian and the fishing port of Shekou. This border was not a barrier in 1979, but a porous, heavily traversed economic interface: daily, an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 people crossed via official checkpoints at Lo Wu, Sha Tau Kok, and Man Kam To, while thousands more used small sampans to traverse Mirs Bay and the Shenzhen River for informal trade.

The county’s natural environment supported a diverse range of primary production, shaped by its subtropical monsoon climate: average annual temperatures of 22.3°C, 1,800 to 2,200 millimeters of annual rainfall, and a 350-day frost-free growing season ideal for rice, lychee, longan, and banana cultivation. In 1979, Bao’an’s 180,000 mu (12,000 hectares) of arable land produced 80,000 tons of rice, 12,000 tons of lychees, and 3,000 tons of vegetables, 40% of which was sold informally to Hong Kong buyers across the border. Its 65-kilometer coastline sat adjacent to some of the most productive inshore fishing grounds in South China: the Dapeng Bay and Mirs Bay fisheries, where the mixing of freshwater from the Pearl River and saltwater from the South China Sea created nutrient-rich conditions for pomfret, hairtail, cuttlefish, and shrimp. In 1979, Bao’an’s fishing fleet of 1,200 small sampans and 80 larger wooden trawlers produced 12,000 tons of catch, 90% of which was sold fresh to Hong Kong markets within 24 hours of landing.

The county’s most strategically valuable but completely untapped natural asset was its deep-water port potential. Hydrographic surveys conducted by the People’s Liberation Army Navy in 1975 (but not released to civilian planners until 1980) found that the coastline from Shekou to Chiwan had natural water depths of -7 to -15 meters at low tide, with access channels deep enough to accommodate 10,000-ton cargo ships—far deeper than the Huangpu Port area of Guangzhou, which could only handle ships of up to 3,000 tons at the time. In 1979, this coastline was entirely undeveloped for commercial use: Shekou hosted only a small fishing wharf with capacity for 50 boats, while the rest of the shoreline was dotted with abandoned salt pans, mangrove swamps, and small fishing villages. No formal port infrastructure, cargo handling equipment, or shipping routes existed, as the central government’s planned economy prioritized river and rail transport over coastal shipping for the Pearl River Delta region.

> Sidebar: Did You Know? > The 1979 hydrographic survey of Shekou’s waters found that the natural harbor had a wave sheltering factor of 0.92, meaning it was protected from 92% of South China Sea swells—a rating comparable to Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, which was already one of the world’s busiest ports at the time. This natural advantage would make Shekou the site of China’s first modern container terminal just five years later.

Population Structure and Livelihood Patterns: A Rural Workforce Shaped by Proximity to Hong Kong

Bao’an’s 310,000 residents in 1979 were overwhelmingly rural, with only 30,000 non-agricultural residents concentrated in the county seat of Nantou, the border towns of Shekou, Sha Tau Kok, and Lo Wu, and a handful of small market towns. The population was overwhelmingly locally born: only 12,000 temporary residents, mostly traders from other parts of Guangdong and Fujian, lived in the county, and formal internal migration was almost non-existent due to the household registration (hukou) system that restricted movement between rural and urban areas. The population was young: 45% of residents were under the age of 20, reflecting a high birth rate of 28 per 1,000 people, while only 4% of residents were over the age of 65, reflecting both high birth rates and the fact that tens of thousands of working-age adults had successfully fled to Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s.

The educational attainment of the population was low by national standards, let alone global ones: 35% of the population over the age of 12 was illiterate or semi-illiterate, 45% had only a primary school education, 20% had completed junior high school, and less than 1% had any post-secondary education. Most of the county’s 120 primary schools and 12 junior high schools were under-resourced, with an average student-teacher ratio of 35:1 and almost no science or technology labs. The county had no high schools, vocational schools, or colleges, meaning that any resident seeking post-secondary education had to travel to Guangzhou or Hong Kong.

The vast majority of Bao’an’s working population relied on primary production for their livelihoods, organized under the people’s commune system’s “three-level ownership, team-based” structure. Land, fishing boats, and farm tools were owned collectively by the commune, brigade (village), or production team, with individual households only holding usage rights. Income was distributed via a work point system: an able-bodied adult male farmer earned 10 work points per day of labor, while women and older workers earned 6 to 8 points. At the end of each year, the production team’s total income (mostly from crop and fish sales) was divided by the total number of work points earned by all team members to calculate the value of each point. In 1978, the average value of a work point was 7 fen (0.07 yuan), meaning an adult male farmer earned an average of 2,550 work points per year, or 178.5 yuan annually—barely enough to cover basic food and clothing costs for a family of five.

> Sidebar: Oral History Excerpt, 2023 > *"In 1979, I was 28 years old, fishing out of Shekou. Every morning we’d push our sampans out into Mirs Bay, come back by noon with 200 to 300 catties of fish. Half we’d sell to the Hong Kong buyers who came over on small speedboats, the other half we’d carry to the Xixiang market on our

The sampans, the other half we’d sell to the Hong Kong sampan traders who tied up at the Shekou wharf before dawn. That year, I made 1,200 yuan selling fish—six times what my cousin made farming rice in the inland communes. We didn’t think of ourselv