Shenzhen thrives amid US tech war
At 40, the special economic zone learns to withstand outside pressure
Late Monday night, almost all the interior lights were on at a 50-story skyscraper in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province.
The headquarters of Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings has become a vivid display of how the city can grow into a new Silicon Valley despite mounting pressure from the US government to curb China’s tech rise.
At the heart of China’s innovation center, many employees of Chinese tech giants like Tencent, Huawei and DJI are getting used to working long hours, some sharing similar life experiences about settling down in the city, becoming brave entrepreneurs, striving to achieve their goals, and being successful one day.
For them, the history of Shenzhen, from a small fishing village to one of the world’s megacities, can always provide some inspiration. Particularly when the Trump administration initiated an all-out tech war against China in recent years, such inspiration has become more valuable for those who have been struggling to overcome the difficult moments amid US sanctions.
As the country’s first special economic zone (SEZ), established on August 26, 1980, Shenzhen saw its GDP surpass neighboring Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2018 for the first time, reaching 2.69 trillion yuan ($389.2 billion).
The city’s success story has also been part of China’s economic reform and
opening-up, which is a process of shrugging off outdated ideas and trying new things, while marching forward in a fearless manner.
And in Shenzhen, the process is also the most important part of becoming a technology and innovation hub, where everyone can become a “maker” and a “dreamer.”
Shenzhen spirit
The southern China city is also one of the most diverse societies and the country’s largest migrant city, which has been absorbing talent, capital and new ideas over the decades.
“Why Shenzhen?” has become the most frequently asked question among young entrepreneurs.
In the eyes of a spokesperson of leading Shenzhen-based drone maker DJI, surnamed Xie, who came to Shenzhen during the 2012 Spring Festival dejectedly after failing to start up an internet business in Beijing, the city’s spirit equates to a huge luminous banner he saw in a bus station, after going downstairs from his apartment in the freezing winter.
“Innovation encouraged and failure tolerated,” he remembered.
The banner lit up his gloomy mood at that time. It also sparked his career and made him, as well as millions of China’s top talents, choose to stay in the costal city and build it into a world tech powerhouse.
“The city is vibrant, but not results-driven. People are encouraged to be innovative, to think out of the box and to brainstorm with people of different backgrounds. The cost of failure is also extremely low, and the city takes failure as normal as having breakfast,” Xie said.
Such tolerance has been attracting thousands of young people every year to start their own businesses in the city, allowing the place to become a technology-driven manufacturing hub with highly integrated supply chains.
Driven by supportive policies, a growing number of talent and an innovative ecosystem, Shenzhen contributed nearly half of the 49,000 applications for international patents that the country filed in 2019, which was also ranked as the fourth worldwide.
‘A sense of mission’
At small coffee shops and restaurants along the Yuehai street in Nanshan district, home to major tech giants like ZTE, Tencent and DJI, conversations at lunch have been shifting from advanced technologies to the yearlong trade war waged by the US against China.
Or even, specifically, a tech war against the street, some locals joked, as most Chinese tech giants targeted by the White House are located there.
For some Chinese entrepreneurs, the tech war that the US initiated a few years ago has become a learning process on how to adapt to a changing world.
Jason Ji, a manager at a Shenzhenbased headset manufacturer, used to spend at least half an hour updating news about how Washington imposed restrictions or “sanctions” on Chinese firms last year.
In response to Washington’s relentless crackdown, Ji’s firm has begun sourcing all of its parts from Chinese firms this year, and shifted to the domestic market.
Facing uncertainties overseas, more local high-tech firms have been inspired to develop more innovative products and elevate their core competitiveness, some representatives told the Global Times.
Rather than panicking, we have to believe we can do better, and make American customers understand that our drones benefit their lives, Xie told the Global Times.
“In the past, we were just thinking about ourselves, about starting up a successful business. But now our vision has changed. It’s more like our duty and responsibility to make leading technologies that benefit the public,” Xie said.
Such a goal is not only for their own interests, but also for Shenzhen and for China, some industry representatives noted. They also believe that politics won’t triumph over business, and hard work leads to a different future, like Shenzhen has experienced in the past four decades. The city’s SEZ has turned 40, which makes it immune from perplexities.
“We must showcase to the world that ‘what does not kill you makes you stronger,’ and we can make it better,” Xie said.