Shenzhen government on Tuesday denied rumors that the city would become the fifth municipality of China.
The rumors are groundless and pure conjecture by netizens. Shenzhen will follow the leadership of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the State Council, the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and the provincial government, a spokesperson for the information office of Shenzhen said.
Striving to be at the forefront in the new era, Shenzhen vows to establish a high quality, well-off society and take the lead in the new journey to fully build a modern Socialist China, the information office said.
China has four municipalities and elevating Shenzhen as the fifth has been proposed several times at the National People's Congress (NPC). The latest proposal in March by Li Guangyu, an NPC deputy, suggested that Shenzhen incorporate neighboring cities of Dongguan and Huizhou to become a municipality of strategic significance, Hong Kong-based newspaper Wen Wei Po reported in March.
A municipality under the jurisdiction of the central government shares a status equal to provinces and autonomous regions. Shenzhen, on the other hand, is under the jurisdiction of the Guangdong Provincial government.
Shenzhen has the strategic potential, but the difficulty lies in policy integration, Zhong Wei, an economics professor at Beijing Normal University, said on the China Business Network website.
Shenzhen can outcompete Hong Kong in technology, and the latter is gradually losing its financial position to Shanghai. But if resources are concentrated in Shenzhen, Guangdong may face a resource drain, Zhong said.
