Shenzhen, situated just across the border from Hong Kong, is a beautiful coastal garden city in South China. It is a city of sunshine and modernity, where economic development keeps pace with social development, and people live in harmony with nature.

Shenzhen which is the China's first special economic zone established via the patronage of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping is a pioneering and innovative city. It is in the vanguard of China's reforms and opening up to the rest of the world. In its short history of 27 years, Shenzhen has developed from a small fishing village into a modern city with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita which gives it premier ranking in China. This is a remarkable achievement, notable in the annals of urbanization, industrialization and modernization across the globe.

As Shenzhen embraces the world, concomitantly it is becoming internationalized. As China's first special economic zone, Shenzhen began to open up to the rest of the world in 1980, becoming one of the country's major channels of communication with the outside world. Shenzhen has 17 sea, land and air ports, including China's largest land passenger port and land cargo port. In 2011, the 26th Universiade will be held here, which will make Shenzhen the youngest city in history to host the Games.

Shenzhen is a city with deep cultural roots that sit in tandem with its creative and modern ethos. It is said to have a history of 5,000 years, but was only founded 27 years ago. Since its foundation, Shenzhen has created a migrant culture and an innovative spirit of “encouraging innovation and pursuing excellence.” At the forefront of Chinese cities in promoting the use of voluntary services, it boasts about 530,000 volunteers in various fields of activity. Moreover, given the high level of public services offered by the city's government departments, Shenzhen is one of China's “10 Most Welcomed Cities for Rural Migrant Workers.”

Shenzhen is a sunny, young and modern city, China's brilliant tourism city and an international garden city. Shenzhen is a picture, a poem and a dream. Dubbed “Wonderful Shenzhen, A City of Joy,” the city sincerely welcomes the arrival of friends from all over the world.

Shenzhen is one of the most important tourism cities in Mainland China and a very important base for making tourism profit in foreign currency, highly reputed as “China's Theme Park and Capital of Tourism Innovation”. Particularly the Oversea Chinese Tourism Zone and Mission Hills Golf Club are the first batch top-grade Class AAA tourism zones. Shenzhen is highly favored with the tourism and transportation network with the stereoscopic vision, safe and swift convenience, easy access to the sea, inland and air ports and easy connection with thee inland, waterway and urban transport facilities, greatly bringing the development of food, residence, travel, tourism and amusement into coordination, gathering together the delicacies and famous, excellent and special variety and new commodities from all parts of the country and the world.

In 2006 the tourism residential facilities enjoy 23.1728 million person times of the over-night guests and tourists, increased by 8.1% over the previous year, including the overseas tourists of 7.1274 million person times, up to 15.6%. The employees in the tourism industry exceed more than 0.12 million and the fixed assets reach more than 20 billion RMB yuan. The main tourism scenic spots aggregate up to more than 50 and there are altogether 160-odd star-level hotels and 70-odd travel agencies.