Finding echoes of home 7,000 miles away

As part of The Chronicle’s coverage of the Warriors’ trip to China for two exhibitions against Minnesota, Golden State beat writer Connor Letourneau is posting regular first-person accounts of what he observes.

SHENZHEN, China — For a city that’s home to nearly 12 million people, Shenzhen’s rise as one of the world’s key manufacturing hubs has been remarkably swift.

As our guide — a young woman who lives in the area — explained to a bus full of NBA officials and reporters on our way to Shenzhen City Arena, the city was a fishing village of a few thousand people only 40 years ago.

Shenzhen, which sits in the Pearl River delta next to Hong Kong, began to grow rapidly when Deng Xiaoping dubbed it a special economic zone in 1980. Its lax environmental rules and cheap land attracted foreign investors who helped make it a hub for market-driven experimentation.

Today, many consider it China’s Silicon Valley. Shenzhen has added roughly 4 million people in just nine years. Not surprisingly, such hurried expansion has caused a striking wealth disparity. Glimmering new skyscrapers stand adjacent to decrepit towers that are so close together that they’re known locally as “handshake buildings.”

Though it’s nearly 7,000 miles from the Bay Area, Shenzhen’s booming economy — and the repercussions, both positive and negative, that stem from it — remind me a bit of San Francisco.

— Connor Letourneau