SIR Vince Cable, a former British politician and an economist, has hailed Shenzhen’s extraordinary transformation, saying the city has completed an urban evolution in just over four decades that would have taken centuries elsewhere.

He made the remarks in a post on China’s social media platform Xiaohongshu after visiting Shenzhen with colleagues from Cam Rivers Publishing. The trip also included stops in Beijing, Hangzhou, and other cities. It was his third visit to Shenzhen.

“Thirty years ago, it was a colossal construction site. Ten years ago, when I returned as a British minister, the city had largely taken shape. This time it felt startlingly new again,” Cable wrote.

He described waking to a skyline that “made me blink: fresh towers ranked like dominoes, the whole city green. Hills inside and outside the urban core are cloaked in trees.”

What impressed him most was the electrification of transport. “More than half the vehicles on the road are electric vehicles or hybrids. Charging stations have hundreds of charging poles — some run by my former employer Shell. The air is clear.”

He also praised the courtesy and discipline on the road. Drivers obey lights, yield to pedestrians and cyclists, and horns are rare. Even at busy transit hubs, he observed that the order is “almost British.”

Cable experienced Shenzhen’s tech up close. He tried a medical robot in a shopping mall that can scan a person’s health from three meters away, and a handheld translator let him chat effortlessly with a young hotel housekeeper.

On the city’s edge, he found signs that tradition endures. A battered Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) temple has once again become a communal heart, with dragon motifs on doors and a banyan heavy with red wish ribbons.

“Shenzhen may not represent the whole of China, but it truly showcases the remarkable face of Chinese urban development,” he wrote.

Cable is perhaps best known in the U.K. as the former leader of the Liberal Democrats party, a position he held until his withdrawal from the political sphere in 2019. He also acted as the secretary of State for Business, Innovation, and Skills between 2010 and 2015 and stood as a Member of Parliament for 20 years.

(Li Jing)