This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. To mark the occasion, we are publishing a series of reports celebrating the city’s achievements in different aspects over the past four decades.

FROM a small, backward, border town to an international metropolis, Shenzhen has undergone tremendous changes over the past 40 years. The city’s vitality also attracts an increasing number of young people to pursue their dreams in the city.

In a survey soliciting people’s opinions of Shenzhen, 56.6 percent of respondents believe that the complete industrial chain and more employment opportunities are the most attractive things of Shenzhen to young people, China Youth Daily reported Thursday.

Meanwhile, 56.1 percent of respondents say what Shenzhen attracts young people most is that the city is young, trendy and vigorous.

The survey, involving 3,021 people polled online, was launched by the social investigation center affiliated to the Daily on Oct. 10. Young people who were born after 1980 account for 92.8 percent of the respondents.

Among the surveyed people, 36.3 percent of the respondents are from special economic zones (SEZs) including the cities Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong Province and Xiamen City in Fujian Province.

Compared with provincial capitals, small and medium-sized cities and municipalities directly under the Central Government, more respondents expressed their preference to work in SEZs, according to the survey.

Among the respondents who are still working and living in Shenzhen, 55.4 percent of them are wanting to work in SEZs.

An open question was specially set up in the survey. Without any prompt, each respondent was asked to fill in the most representative enterprise in Shenzhen. Tencent (48.1 percent) and Huawei (32.9 percent) are most frequently mentioned, while DJI ranks third.

According to the survey, the 3,021 respondents gave an average score of 6.53 out of 10 to Shenzhen’s attractiveness. It is noteworthy that one-fifth of respondents gave a full mark.

Further analysis of the data found that respondents from Shenzhen scored significantly higher on Shenzhen’s attractiveness – an average of 7.34, with 28.3 percent of them giving a full mark.

Hu Xiaowu, deputy head of the Institute of Urban Science of Nanjing University, attributed Shenzhen’s attractiveness to young people to five aspects, namely institutional advantages, industrial structure, social governance, ecological environment and cultural diversity. (Zhang Yu)