Investment, Growth Strategies, and Intellectual Property

Special economic zones (SEZs) are geographically bounded areas within a country offering more favorable tax rates, streamlined regulation, and infrastructure investment than the surrounding economy, designed to attract export-oriented manufacturing and foreign investment. China's most celebrated example is Shenzhen, established as an SEZ in 1980 under the economic reforms championed by Deng Xiaoping; the fishing town of roughly thirty thousand people at the time grew into a manufacturing and technology metropolis of many millions within a few decades, becoming the emblematic case cited by other developing countries seeking to replicate the model.