The Shenzhen Exception: Selective Empowerment and Institutional Innovation in China's Sub-Provincial Governance Under Xi Jinping

This article examines how and why the Chinese central government has intensified its engagement with Shenzhen under Xi Jinping. It highlights new institutional mechanisms – comprehensive authorisation packages, inter-ministerial conference frameworks, and personnel secondment schemes – that enable Shenzhen to interact directly with central authorities, bypassing traditional bureaucratic intermediaries. These arrangements transform Shenzhen into a key site for aligning local policy experimentation with national priorities. Drawing on field interviews and policy documents, the article argues that these mechanisms reflect a targeted strategy to address three national imperatives: industrial upgrading, deeper integration with Hong Kong, and managing Sino–U.S. economic decoupling. The evolving relationship is underpinned by selective empowerment – a form of conditional delegation in which the centre entrusts select localities with expanded policy discretion under structured oversight. This model does not signify a shift towards decentralisation or recentralisation but reflects a recalibration of central–local relations, emphasising functional responsiveness over rigid hierarchy.