For two decades now, economists have been urging Tokyo to create one or two special-enterprise zones. Southern China features such a place — Shenzhen. Today, the once small coastal village is a teeming collage of huge skyscrapers, thriving industrial parks, 10 million people, one of the world's busiest ports, and some of the biggest manufacturing and outsourcing industries anywhere. "Tohoku can be to Japan what Shenzhen was to China," says Jeff Kingston, head of the Asian Studies program at Temple University, Japan Campus.