The phenomenal rise of Shenzhen, a newly emergent city where the number of non-registered residents far exceeds that of registered ones, has been closely associated with a complex and dynamic interplay between the process of globalization, which has enabled Shenzhen’s incredible transformation from an impoverished fishing village to a leading global metropolis, and the forces of localization, which have compelled Shenzhen to take its own distinct circumstances into consideration. The miracle of Shenzhen can be construed not only as an iconic embodiment of China’s process of modernization and globalization since reform and opening-up, but also as a local attempt to reconstruct an alternative modernity with Chinese characteristics in the homogenizing context of globalization. To elucidate how Shenzhen has played a leading role both in promoting China’s integration into the global system and in demonstrating the uniqueness of China’s development in the age of globalization, this article makes a careful exploration of Shenzhen’s process of modern centralization and postmodern decentralization over the past several decades. While modernizing and centralizing itself in the global context, Shenzhen also tries to reconstruct an alternative modernity with concrete Chinese practices, which has not only led to the emergence of multiple centers in China but also undermined the singular and fixed meaning of global modernity by deterritorializing its narrow domain and expanding its restricted reference with specific Chinese practices.