A New Tech Hub Megapolis in China Designed to Replicate the Success of Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a project or a dedicated area that every country should strive to create. Having a place that is focused on encouraging youth to innovate, and allowing startups to form and grow. Japan has decided to turn the town of Fukuoka into its Silicon Valley and aggressively marketed the city on both the domestic level and abroad. Although, there was no major breakthrough yet the city has attracted attention and offers favorable conditions for starting a tech business such as different IT companies and even online gambling platforms with different bonus codes like Betfair for example.

China aims to do the same thing. It is important to ensure the talented individuals do not leave the country, and that you create a domestic product that has a revolutionary impact. In the US town of San Francisco, Silicon Valley supports both Apple and Facebook, which are both absolute titans when it comes to revenue and size, along with multiple other successful companies. So, let’s see how one of the countries with the strongest economies plans to do things in their yard.  

China’s plan

The long-awaited Chinese answer to Silicon Valley was revealed. China intends to connect the southern Pearl River Delta and create a huge tech hub focused on building research facilities and innovation. According to some analysts, the project is as promising as it is challenging, mainly because China plans to create a megacity, by connecting up to 9 cities with Macau and Hong Kong, which will cover the area of roughly 56,000 square kilometers. This is significantly bigger than Silicon Valley of the U.S as it has a population of 3.1 million and spreads across 121.4 square kilometers.

However, being a compact area has its perks, much like Fukuoka town in Japan. The companies are more tight-nit, and meeting relevant people and forming the right partnerships is way easier in that case. That being said, having a giant tech hub is bound to have its own perks, as it will likely be easier for startups to find investors, something that Fukuoka currently struggles with. The plan is not that innovative also, throughout the history of China, a lot of economic plans were successfully executed thanks to the similar bottom-up support.     

Challenges that lie ahead 

One of the main challenges for successful execution is legal issues. As this is going to be a massive area, it means that three jurisdictions with different laws and regulations need to sync-up. This is also what makes the plan different compared to the other similar ventures in China. As a country, China never shied away from making big investments in tech development and very often it has led to overlapping in development and excess in supplies.  

If this gap is successfully bridged it will be so much more than simply lifting the physical barrier between the cities. It will mean that both financial and information has an unobstructed flow, which is basically the bread and butter of any startup. However, this ideal synergy might not be so easy to pull off. These systemic barriers are pretty hard as they are reinforced by social and political aspects. On one side we have a communist counter, whereas on the other we have a free society, which typically doesn’t hold hands together.