Through detailed ethnographic research, spatial and geographic history, and discourse analysis, Learning from Shenzhen is an anthology that examines the process by which Shenzhen has become “a model for a new form of global Chinese capitalism ruled by single-party socialism” (p. 1). Specifically, the editors argue that Shenzhen exemplifies “China's effective, if not always predictable, use of territorial exceptionalism as a strategy for managing the socioeconomic changes that come with the market” (p. 251). Individual chapters, well researched and well written, are by scholars from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, literature, art history, urban studies and public health. The contributions cover a range of topics, including urban planning (by Weiwen Huang), urbanization and ruralization (by Mary Ann O’Donnell), “urbanized villages” (chengzhongcun) and their relations to the city (by Jonathan Bach), borders and zones (by Emma Xin Ma and Adrian Blackwell), media discourse on migrant workers (by Eric Florence); female sex workers (by Willa Dong and Yu Cheng); migrant painters (by Winnie Wong), city leaders (by Mary Ann O'Donnell), public health (by Katherine A. Mason) and the airport (by Max Hirsh). The chapters on urbanized villages, including their relations to urban planning, urbanization and creative spaces, are the most coherent. They contribute to the understanding of urban transformations in China.

The book's theoretical frame heavily relies on two concepts: “exception” and “model.” Jonathan Bach's chapters and the book's Conclusion elaborate a spatial concept of exception. Since the 1950s, trade zones have played an important role in enabling a particular kind of international production, functioning as a “spatial adaptation of the sovereign state system to global forms of capital accumulation” (p. 28). Within the international context of the “zone logic” of turning the exception into the rule, Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) exemplifies both “a site of economic planning” that enhances capital accumulation and “a version of an imagined modern, rational city with its inherent civilizing mission” (p. 23). Ultimately, the editors conclude, Shenzhen showcases a “strategy of territorial exceptionalism,” deploying the trade zone to reorganize both national and international “logics of territory and identity by allowing for exceptions to national law within bounded territories” (p. 251).

This important argument enables us to consider the issue of “emergency” – an emergent situation in which existing norms break down to cause risks to the normal operations of an entire system – a problem the development of spatial exception tries to address. It is a fact that the creation of Shenzhen SEZ in 1980 served as a model of economic development (as shown by the book). It was also, as an SEZ, governed differently from the rest of China. Even within Shenzhen, many zones such as urbanized villages, creative spaces and the airport were governed differently from the rest of the SEZ. Crucial questions remain: why did the government decide to suspend the existing socialist laws to enact the exception as the rule in the late 1970s? What national “emergency” was the government trying to address, to maintain its sovereignty and legitimacy? Was the economy considered an “emergency,” when the basic needs of life were treated as a matter of sovereignty? One “emergency” specific to Shenzhen was the coming national reunification with Hong Kong (a model of the capitalist economy highly regarded by American neoliberal economists and organizations such as Milton Friedman and the Heritage Foundation), with the expiry of Britain's lease of the New Territories on 1 July 1997. Shenzhen's task was to make legible the emergent “one country, two systems” framework, which was institutionalized in a form of international agreement (the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration). From this perspective, many connections between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, discussed or mentioned in the book, make good sense: the development of international and internal borders, the Shekou Industrial Park and the Overseas Chinese Town (established and developed by Hong Kong-based Chinese state-owned transnational companies), the cross-border check-in system at Shenzhen International Airport, and Shenzhen's unfolding future (inseparable from the coming of 2046 when Hong Kong will be fully integrated into the country).

Through normalizing the exception as the rule, Shenzhen has become a model. That is, Shenzhen SEZ is recognized as a model of spatial practices that transform the emergent into a mundane assemblage of happenings, in the incorporation of capitalism into socialism. Often expressed in terms of “experiments” – whether “path-breaking” (chuang), risk-taking or innovative, within the “reforms and openings” discourses – the Shenzhen model manifests the norm of the exception as the rule, mainly in the fashioning of capitalist ways of doing things as ordinary within Chinese socialism. Thus, practices of this kind of modelling – for example, by leaders of Shenzhen and managers of state-owned companies – are transgressive, moving back and forth between the illicit and the licit. As for migrant labourers and sex workers (those discussed in the book), they are “models” mainly as subjects desirable for capitalist exploitations. In summary, through making the incorporation of capitalism into a socialist framework practical, the Shenzhen model succeeds when capitalism as an exception to socialism becomes mundane and repetitive on a daily basis.