The Vibrant Express bullet train can speed from Hong Kong to Shenzhen in 14 minutes. Exit the downtown Futian Station here and what unfolds is unlike anything anywhere else: a Chinese mega-city rising from what was, until the 1980s, a rag-tag collection of villages. 

Today, in a place where people used to toil in rice paddies, you can stay at the Ritz, buy a $380,000 Porsche and, if you’re rich enough, cut a deal in China’s Silicon Valley.