Shenzhen’s Coming of Age: APEC and the Life That Follows

I spent some time in Shenzhen on a recent trip back to China. The city has changed enormously. Its towers, metro lines and shopping centres are thoroughly modern. Yet I still came across little things in everyday life that could have been much easier.

Take the metro, for example.

Once, after getting off a train, I was trying to find an exit. I looked up and the most prominent things seemed to be advertisements, brightly coloured and placed where nobody could miss them. The exit signs I actually needed were much harder to spot. Some were small and buried among all the other information. I had to stand there for a while and look carefully.

For someone who takes the same route every day, that is probably no problem. They already know which exit leads where. But for a visitor who has never been to Shenzhen before, especially an older person, it is a different matter. All I wanted was to know which way to go. Instead, the first things I saw were advertisements.

I had a similar experience inside the train. There was a long, detailed route map with all the station names, but the lettering was tiny. Sometimes I simply wanted to know which station we had reached and where the train was going next, yet it took some effort to find the answer. Other lines and newer trains may have better displays. I am describing what I actually encountered.

It reminded me of trains in Sydney. On some of the trains I regularly use, the information is much less cluttered. Rather than trying to squeeze every station name into a diagram, a large electronic display at either end of the carriage tells you clearly which station comes next. You look up and you know where you are. Simple, clear and useful—and rather attractive, too.

Of course, I would not claim that Shenzhen’s metro is inferior to Sydney’s trains on the strength of one small detail. Shenzhen’s system has real advantages, including its extensive network and frequent services, and the speed of the city’s development is impressive. I just think these little details are worth paying attention to.

When someone designs signs in a public space, whose point of view are they taking? The advertiser wants to be noticed. The operator wants to provide complete information. Both are understandable. But the person who has just arrived may urgently need only one thing: the exit, the interchange direction or the name of the next station. They do not know which details the designer considers important, and they have not yet learned the local habits.

I doubt the designers are unaware of this. The difficulty is that when we live in a familiar environment for a long time, we easily assume that what is obvious to us will be obvious to everyone else. To put ourselves in the shoes of someone arriving for the first time, and imagine how they would search for the information they need, takes a kind of perspective that is easier to describe than to practise.

That brings me to something rather important happening in Shenzhen just now.

The APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting will be held in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November this year. With about a month to go, preparations must be entering their final stages. It is certainly something for the city to celebrate. I would even call it a kind of coming-of-age occasion for Shenzhen.

A meeting of this kind gives leaders, delegations, journalists and other visitors from around the region a chance to see Shenzhen for themselves. It is also a good opportunity to improve transport, the urban environment, public facilities and visitor services. There is nothing wrong with wanting to make the city more welcoming and presentable for its guests.

Still, a coming-of-age occasion need not be treated as though the city were facing a national emergency.

APEC is not an event that takes place only once every few decades. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum has 21 member economies, and its leaders normally meet every year, with member economies taking turns to host. Nor have all its meetings been held in cities on the scale of Beijing or Shanghai.

In 2000, the leaders met in Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei, a small Southeast Asian country with a modest population. In 2018, they met in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea has a very different level of economic development and urban infrastructure from Shenzhen, but it was perfectly capable of being the host.

So hosting APEC is a good thing, but it does not suddenly confer some extraordinary international status on a city. Given Shenzhen’s economic strength, size and infrastructure today, hosting such a meeting seems a natural step.

There is another interesting point. In Chinese, the meeting is explicitly called an ‘informal’ leaders’ meeting.

‘Informal’ certainly does not mean unimportant, and it does not mean diplomatic protocol or security can be neglected. It refers mainly to the nature of the discussions. Leaders have room for relatively flexible exchanges, while APEC works largely through consensus and voluntary commitments rather than binding treaty obligations. In that spirit, the host should be thoughtful and well prepared, without behaving as if one imperfect detail would somehow damage the reputation of the entire city.

In China we tend to care quite a lot about appearances, especially when important guests are coming. We want the house spotless and everything at its best. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. The trouble comes when we spend so much effort on appearances that we end up renovating the sitting room and buying new furniture while simply covering the less attractive parts with a nice piece of cloth. Once the guests leave, the cloth comes off, and the old problems are still there.

A city can be a little like that.

Resurfacing roads, improving streetscapes and raising service standards are all welcome. What matters to me more is whether the improvements remain part of everyday life afterwards. If the metro exit signs become easier to read because the city is preparing for an international meeting, it will not be only foreign visitors who benefit. The people of Shenzhen will benefit every day.

Then there are all those reminders about civilised behaviour.

‘Do not spit.’

Signs like that may have been necessary several decades ago, when public hygiene habits were still developing. Reminding people how to behave in shared spaces served a purpose. But today, seeing such a basic requirement displayed as a prominent public message can feel a little embarrassing.

Not spitting in the street ought to be one of the most elementary expectations of modern urban life. It should come as naturally as getting dressed before leaving home. If a modern city still has to remind people repeatedly not to do it, the sign is not only promoting good manners. It is also revealing something rather awkward about the habits that have yet to take hold.

Car horns are another example. Shenzhen has been regulating unnecessary honking through citywide notices for years, and has recently issued another such notice. Rules of this kind have their place, and the legal exceptions needed for road safety must remain. But I look forward to a day when drivers refrain from sounding their horns not because they fear a fine or have just noticed a prohibition sign, but because quiet, orderly roads have become normal and unnecessary honking simply feels inconsiderate.

Queuing, crossing roads and keeping public spaces clean are much the same. People form a queue without needing someone to organise them. Streets stay clean without requiring a special clean-up whenever a major event comes along. None of this is dramatic, and it hardly makes for a grand publicity campaign. Yet these ordinary habits tell us a great deal about how a city actually works.

I hope that, over time, some of those signs reminding people of the very basics will become less common. Not because anyone has stopped caring, but because the reminders are no longer needed.

If this APEC meeting helps Shenzhen take another step forward in public services and city management, that will matter more to me than how polished the city looks during the meeting itself. When the delegates have gone home, the traffic should still run smoothly, the streets should still be clean, the metro signs should still be legible and public services should still be convenient. Those are the improvements worth keeping.

But I have another, rather more amusing, hope.

I would like to see the day when hosting international meetings is so ordinary in Shenzhen that hardly anyone makes a fuss about it. An international economic forum this week, a technology summit the next, and a global academic conference soon afterwards. International organisations, multinational companies and universities come to Shenzhen regularly. Hotels, transport, venues and reception teams all know what to do. The city carries on running, and its residents carry on living.

Perhaps two friends in Shenzhen will be chatting one day, and one will casually say, ‘I hear APEC is coming back next month.’

The other will think for a moment. ‘Oh, APEC again? Didn’t Shenzhen host it many years ago?’

‘Yes, in 2026. That was more than ten years ago.’

‘Oh, that’s right. It was quite a production back then. The whole city seemed to be getting ready, and everyone was rather nervous about it.’

They will laugh, then move on to something else.

That sort of ease, I think, is one sign of a mature city. Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai have long experience of hosting international conferences and major events. They still prepare carefully for important occasions, of course, but they have established ways of doing things. Every visiting delegation need not feel like the first important guest ever to arrive.

Shenzhen is a young city, and what it has achieved in a few decades is remarkable. Towers can rise in a few years, and new metro lines can open one after another. Public habits, the way services are designed and delivered, and the quiet confidence that comes from being at ease with the wider world take longer to develop.

So I am pleased that Shenzhen will host APEC this year, and I hope the meeting is a great success. Calling the 2026 gathering a coming-of-age occasion seems fitting to me. But after the celebration, there is still a great deal of ordinary life ahead.

Reference links:
APEC 2026 meeting schedule: https://www.apec.org/
APEC 2000, Brunei: https://www.apec.org/meeting-papers/annual-ministerial-meetings/2000/2000_amm
APEC 2018, Port Moresby: https://www.apec.org/meeting-papers/leaders-declarations/2018/2018_aelm
APEC decision-making principles: https://www.apec.org/FAQ
Shenzhen vehicle-horn notice (28 September 2026): https://meeb.sz.gov.cn/gkmlpt/content/13/13002/post_13002796.html