Nigeria, June 4 -- When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping designated Shenzhen as a Special Economic Zone in 1980, only a few could have predicted that the quiet fishing town with a population of roughly 30,000 people, beside bustling Hong Kong, would evolve into one of the world's biggest manufacturing and technology powerhouses in today's world. The differences between both periods paint a vivid picture of how rapidly the economic landscape shifts when policies are properly thought through and put into effect, even when it takes decades to achieve the desired results.

Unlike major Chinese cities such as Beijing or Shanghai, Shenzhen earlier had little industrial significance and almost no global economic influence. However, its strategic loc...