The city's Fifth Congress of the Party Representatives in May decided that leading officials will be nominated more by public recommendation and decided more by public election rather than higher authority appointments.
By 2015, at least half of Shenzhen's new promotions for leadership positions below bureau level will be decided through competitive election.
In descending order, the ranks of China's civilian official echelon are state leaders, ministers, bureau chiefs, division chiefs and section heads.
Official figures show that more than 3,000 people have taken up Shenzhen leadership posts at or below division level through competition since 2005.
The experiment was expanded to the higher bureau-chief level in June when more than 219 people joined in public competition for the city's eight bureau-level leadership positions.
Feng Xianxue, 45, was a dark horse who beat 43 older competitors to win the post of director of the Pingshan New District Management Committee after standing on a soap box to volunteer at an enlarged meeting of the Municipal Party Committee.
Professor Wang Yukai, of the Chinese Academy of Governance, said reform of the selection mechanism for officials was an institutional solution to the problem of over-concentrated power with ineffective supervision.
From this year, the city authority is also ending life-long employment for all new government employees and plans, over the next 30 years, to transfer the city's 40,000 government officials in service from de facto life-long employment to labor contracts.
This is the breaking of the "iron rice bowl," a legacy of the planned economy now reserved mainly for civil servants, and a relic of the past mind-set that civil service employment meant official authority.
EMPOWERING PEOPLE
Non-government social organizations have been encouraged to grow to improve the efficiency of public services and constrain the unnecessary sprawl of government affiliates by cutting ties between government departments and social organizations.
In 2004, when the reform began, 211 government and Party officials were forced to resign from posts in guilds and chambers of commerce, turning the latter into independent associations.
From this year, the creation of public institutions to do tasks that can be accomplished by social organizations is prohibited, says Liu Runhua, director of the Shenzhen Municipal Civil Affairs Department.
The city government has used a package of policies to quicken the growth of social organizations, including purchasing public services from social organizations and providing training services to fledging societies.
Nineteen full-time social organization workers were elected this year to the city's Party Congress, People's Congress and People's Political Consultative Conference, more than double the figure the previous term.
Another Shenzhen reform has been the transformation of neighbourhood committees from defacto inferiors of governments to autonomous residents' organizations responsible for reporting the needs of local people to the government and urging authorities to make timely responses.
Community Work Stations were esblished instead as an agency of the city government to take over the tasks previously performed by neighbourhood committees, such as maintaining social order, family planning and administration for retired workers.
The city has so far established 632 community work stations and 800 neighbourhood committees.
An ardent advocator of China's political system reform, Liu Runhua says that for a long time neighbourhood committees had eroded self-governance by urban residents.
"Now they should play a supervising role over governments and let the government know local residents feel unsatisfied and why," he says.
In an effort to further expand grass-roots democracy, Liu says, the city is considering allowing migrant workers join direct elections of neighbourhood committees next year.
Liu says China has two main paths to expand the Socialist democracy -- one concerning democracy within the Party, and the other grass-roots democracy.
"Although there is still a long way to go and hurdles ahead, I've seen a motivated government bravely striking forward for the good of the people," he says.
