Nanzheng serves as an example, working to counterintuitively embrace the narrative of benign neglect. With its origins uncertain, the county emerged through the haze of the Warring States as an administrative centre, with the city being founded under the Qin Dynasty and briefly serving as the capital of the Han Dynasty under Emperor Gaozu. For a time, Nanzheng served as the economic and political centre of Hanzhong, becoming the capital of an assortment of local districts. Guarding the only roads to the Sichuan Basin, Nanzheng has long been contested for its strategic location, well-known as the frontline against Wei in the Three Kingdoms, and the Jin in the Song Dynasty.

From there, though, the city began to fade from the spotlight it had once endured, superseded by other cities in the area even its military value was still admired. As the Beiyang Government actively collapsed, the city fell under the control of the Guominjun and the NRA, before ultimately coming under the loose grip of the Co-Prosperity Sphere as the Second Sino-Japanese War drew down in intensity.

Since the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Nanzheng has ostensibly had the privilege of being the capital of Hanzhong Province, a beneficiary of an administrative reorganisation. However, in practice, there is no local government. With the sheer strength of partisan movements, and with the threat to other neighbouring provinces posed by it, any offices opened have remained open to nobody for decades. Lax oversight has allowed Nanzheng to become a centre for the smuggling of drugs, weapons and the black market, ironically helping to strengthen and enrich the city in a manner that has otherwise eluded it for the past few centuries.