Zhongshan
Named after Sun Yat-sen and once a reform-era pioneer, Zhongshan peaked in 2012. Now betting a 24-km sea bridge to Shenzhen will convert geographic centrality into economic revival—or risk becoming a suburb of China's tech capital.
Zhongshan is one of the few Chinese cities named after a person—Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan), born in nearby Cuiheng village in 1866. The father of the Chinese republic gave this Pearl River Delta city both its name and its identity crisis: how do you build a modern economy on a dead revolutionary's brand?
Originally called Xiangshan ('Fragrant Mountain'), the city renamed itself in 1925 to honor Sun Yat-sen and has traded on the association ever since. Over 800,000 overseas Chinese across 87 countries trace ancestry to Zhongshan—a diaspora network that, like Xiamen's Hokkien community, channels remittances and investment home. In the 1980s, Zhongshan was among the pioneering cities of China's reform era, building pillar industries in lighting, furniture, and clothing manufacturing. Guzhen district earned the title 'China's Lighting Capital,' hosting some of the world's finest lighting manufacturers.
But Zhongshan peaked around 2012 and has been gradually overtaken by faster-growing Guangdong neighbors. GDP reached approximately 414 billion yuan in 2024—eighth in the province—reflecting a city searching for its next act. The government proposed '10 new industrial clusters' in 2023: new energy, biomedicine, smart home appliances, and high-end equipment. The strategic bet is the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link—a 24-kilometer sea-crossing bridge that cuts travel time to Shenzhen from two hours to thirty minutes, potentially making Zhongshan a manufacturing suburb for China's tech capital.
The pattern is path dependence in reverse: the same geographic position at the center of the Greater Bay Area that made Zhongshan an early reform winner now makes it vulnerable to being absorbed into larger neighbors' orbits. The city sits between Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Macao—surrounded by economic mass that could either feed it through spillover or starve it through competitive exclusion.
The gene flow from Sun Yat-sen is cultural, not industrial: a revolutionary's name attracts tourists and nationalist sentiment but does not generate semiconductor factories. Whether the Shenzhen bridge converts geographic centrality into economic revival—or merely accelerates talent drainage to Shenzhen—is Zhongshan's existential question.