I get what you mean. I definitely wouldn't say Shenzhen is a modern city as such, despite the skyscrapers and greenery. That is part of the charm though. It is, or used to be, an order of magnitude cheaper to live in SZ than HK. There is of course also absurd levels of inequality, which is less charming but reality.
China has focused a lot of sexy infrastructure (gleamy sky scrapers, HSR, mega-bridges) but not enough at all on unsexy infrastructure (water-treatment plants, drainage, almost anything that isn't superficial).