Situated between the Hong Kong SAR and the provincial capital Guangzhou, as a special economic zone the boomtown Shenzhen has developed in just 30 years from a fishing village into a modern global metropolis with 12 million people. The planned city is considered a role model and as an industrial and financial metropolis is home to numerous businesses and corporations.

The rapid growth of the city necessitated a functioning and equally immense expansion of the infrastructure, above all of the metro routes. 79 individual metro construction projects in Shenzhen were equipped with Herrenknecht technology. Nearly 120 kilometers of tunnel are on the machines' task list for the Lines 1 to 9. The first of the 50 EPB Shields started tunnelling in May 2002, and encountered difficult, changing ground conditions close to the developed area on the surface.