Twenty years ago, Chinese entrepreneurs went to Silicon Valley to learn; today, overseas investors and entrepreneurs are traveling in reverse to cities like Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Shanghai to explore Chinese tech companies in AI, robotics, electric vehicles, and more.

Author and source: Ling Xiao - Technology Investor

Twenty years ago, Chinese entrepreneurs traveling to the United States considered Silicon Valley their most important destination—to visit Google to see the internet, Apple to see products, Stanford to see innovation, and Sand Hill Road to see venture capital.

At that time, there was a very clear global division of labor in the technology industry: the United States handled innovation, while China handled manufacturing.

But twenty years later, an interesting phenomenon emerged: the trend began to reverse. On September 3, Reuters reported that an increasing number of overseas investors, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives are making dedicated trips to Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, and Hefei to visit China’s artificial intelligence, robotics, electric vehicle, and advanced manufacturing companies—and this is no longer a matter of isolated individual visits, but has even begun to form a business in itself.

The five-day technology tour organized by Shanghai-based research firm Baiguan charges up to $15,000; another Shanghai technology tour company, GloPen, reported a 50% increase in inquiries for 2026, with clients primarily from Europe and Singapore, and currently organizes over 100 one-day corporate visits per month. Even factory visits themselves have become a scarce resource. Since March 2024, Xiaomi’s Beijing automotive factory has welcomed over 250,000 visitors, and some tour slots obtained through lottery have been resold online for up to 2,000 RMB.

These people flew to China, spending thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, not to visit an ordinary factory. What they truly want to understand is: why are Chinese tech companies so fast?

This may be one of the biggest shifts in today’s global technology competition. In the past, people studied China to understand why it could produce goods so cheaply; today, more and more are asking why China can turn an idea into a product so quickly. These two questions may seem similar, but they represent two entirely different eras.

01 The world is rediscovering "Made in China"

Over the past few decades, what was the most deeply ingrained label for "Made in China"? Cost. Low-cost labor, massive factories, and a complete export system made China the world’s factory. But if you still understand Chinese industry through the lens of "low-cost manufacturing," you may already be severely outdated.

One of the most straightforward figures is that in the mid-1990s, China accounted for only about 5% of global manufacturing output; today, that figure is close to 30%. In other words, nearly one out of every three dollars of global manufacturing output comes from China.

More importantly, it’s not just the quantity that has changed, but also the structure. Previously, China’s exports consisted mainly of clothing, shoes, toys, and home appliances; today, increasingly important export products have shifted to new energy vehicles, power batteries, photovoltaic systems, drones, industrial robots, and smart hardware.

This means that manufacturing in China is undergoing a significant transformation: from a "cost center" to an "innovation infrastructure."

New energy vehicles are the most typical example. In 2025, nearly 22 million electric vehicles were produced globally, with approximately 16 million produced in China, accounting for nearly three-quarters of global EV production. China also holds over 80% of global battery cell capacity, about 85% of cathode material capacity, and more than 90% of anode material capacity. This means that a significant portion of the core supply chain behind a new energy vehicle company can be found within China. As a result, Chinese new energy vehicle companies have gained a crucial advantage: rapid iteration.

It used to be normal for a car to take five to six years to develop, but today, the pace of competition in China’s new energy vehicle market has accelerated to the point where many traditional automakers struggle to keep up. What do consumers want? Intelligent cockpits, driver assistance, charging speed, range, refrigerators, screens, software ecosystems… The market responds, companies adjust their products, suppliers synchronize their changes, and new models re-enter the market.

What’s truly worth studying, then, isn’t “why Chinese cars are cheap,” but why Chinese automakers can iterate so rapidly.

What's truly terrifying isn't made in China, but China's rapid iteration.

Now consider robots. In 2024, 54% of all newly installed industrial robots worldwide were installed in China, with approximately 295,000 industrial robots installed in a single year. This means that for every two new industrial robots added globally, more than one enters a Chinese factory. The total number of industrial robots currently operating in Chinese factories has exceeded 2 million.

The importance of this data surpasses even how many robots we see doing backflips in short videos, because AI and robotics truly enter industry not on stage performing, but in factories welding, moving, sorting, assembling, inspecting, and handling logistics.

These scenarios generate real data every day and expose robotic limitations daily, creating a powerful flywheel: robots enter factories, acquire real-world data, reveal engineering challenges, drive supply chain improvements, reduce costs, encourage more factories to adopt them, and generate even more data. This is where the true power of the industry lies. Labs answer the question, “Can it be done?” Industry answers, “Can it be done a hundred thousand times a day?” And ultimately, capital cares about, “Can it be done a billion times at a low enough cost?”

Between these three questions lies not just a minor technological difference, but an entire industrial system.

03 What Shenzhen truly sells to the world is not a single robot

So why is Shenzhen one of the core cities of this overseas tech tour? Because what makes Shenzhen most worth studying is never any single company, but the density of its underlying industry.

To build a robot, you need chips, cameras, LiDAR, sensors, motors, gearboxes, lead screws, batteries, structural components, molds, control systems, software, contract manufacturers, testing equipment, and logistics. If these companies are spread across five countries, a single design change could mean weeks of communication; but if these suppliers are concentrated in a highly dense industrial network, everything changes. Engineers can identify an issue in the morning and find a supplier by afternoon; prototypes can be remade within days; if costs are too high, switch materials; if the structure is flawed, modify the mold; after the first generation hits the market, immediately develop the second generation based on customer feedback. What’s truly compressed is time.

Shenzhen has not simply developed a supply chain, but rather a massive "technology time compressor."

Drones are an extreme example. Shenzhen is home to over 1,500 companies related to drones, and Shenzhen-based manufacturers once accounted for approximately 74% of the global consumer drone market. According to industry research firms, DJI, based in Shenzhen, holds an estimated 70%–80% share of the global non-military and non-governmental drone market.

Why is this industry concentrated in Shenzhen? The answer isn’t just that DJI was born here—it’s because the components and capabilities drones require—motors, batteries, cameras, video transmission, chips, structural parts, gimbals, software, and precision manufacturing—are already embedded within this industrial ecosystem.

It's not that a great company created the entire industry chain; rather, a sufficiently dense industrial network is more likely to continuously give rise to great companies.

In China, what has truly emerged is an "industrial compression field."

So I am increasingly inclined to use one term to describe the capabilities taking shape in today's Chinese tech industry: industrial compression field.

What is an industrial compression zone? It’s when technology, engineers, supply chains, manufacturing, capital, markets, and application scenarios are all condensed into a highly concentrated industrial network.

Individually, China may not have an absolute advantage in any single area. The United States still boasts the world’s top universities, a robust fundamental research system, leading AI chip companies, and a vast venture capital network centered in Silicon Valley. However, what truly sets China apart is that a large number of technological elements are beginning to converge physically in close proximity.

This proximity creates a powerful multiplier effect. Automakers need batteries; battery manufacturers need raw materials; material suppliers need energy. Robots require motors, sensors, and batteries; drones need chips, vision systems, and communication modules; AI demands servers; and servers require chips, electricity, and data centers. As a result, industries begin to feed one another, and technology no longer moves linearly along a single supply chain—but instead continuously intersects within a vast industrial network.

This is why what’s most worth studying in China today isn’t any single company, but why so many industries are evolving rapidly here at the same time.

05 A more important case: Why did Tesla locate its Gigafactory in Shanghai?

Another classic example of understanding China’s supply chain is Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory.

In the past, many people understood this factory through a single logic: the large Chinese market. But what truly matters is the industrial significance it later developed. The Shanghai factory does not just serve the Chinese market—it has become a vital hub in Tesla’s global export network. By the second quarter of 2026, more than half of the vehicles produced at Tesla’s Shanghai factory were exported. An American company, emblematic of tech-driven automotive innovation, has transformed its Chinese facility into a key production node serving markets in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and beyond. Ultimately, the answer lies in a few key words: supply chain, efficiency, scale, and industrial clusters.

This is why today’s so-called “decoupling” is far more complex than a political slogan. While a factory can be relocated, the hundreds of suppliers surrounding it, tens of thousands of engineers, logistics networks, tooling systems, material supply chains, and decades of accumulated engineering expertise cannot be copied with a single click. What truly matters is never the factory itself, but the invisible, yet continuously efficiency-enhancing industrial collaboration network behind it.

06 In the AI era, why is manufacturing more important than ever?

Many might ask: In the age of AI, aren’t algorithms the most important? Why discuss manufacturing at all? On the contrary, the more AI develops, the more critical manufacturing may become.

Over the past two decades, the internet revolution has primarily taken place in the digital world. Google, Facebook, TikTok, and WeChat are essentially software, and software’s greatest characteristic is that its replication cost is nearly zero—a single app can rapidly reach hundreds of millions of users. But the next phase of AI is entering a different realm: Physical AI. Robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, AI glasses, smart cars, intelligent factories, energy storage systems, and AI endpoints—when artificial intelligence begins to have a “body,” the challenges change completely.

AI no longer needs only GPUs—it also requires motors, gearboxes, sensors, batteries, cameras, materials, factories, and supply chains. As of 2024, over 4.7 million industrial robots are operational worldwide, with more than 500,000 new units added each year, and China accounts for more than half of global new industrial robot installations. This means that AI’s first half may have unfolded in servers, but its second half will likely take place in factories.

At this point, China’s decades-long accumulated manufacturing capabilities suddenly gained a new strategic significance.

What capital truly needs to be repriced is "industrialization capability."

From an investor’s perspective, I believe this situation reflects a larger shift. In the past, tech investors most often asked: “How much of a technological lead do you have?” This question will remain important, but we may now also need to add another: “How quickly can you scale your technology into industry adoption?”

As AI lowers the cost of knowledge dissemination, a model that leads by six months may soon be caught up by competitors; an algorithm that leads by a year may not create a decade-long advantage. In fact, many technological innovations are quickly understood and replicated by engineers worldwide. As a result, what will truly be difficult to replicate in the future may become increasingly “heavy”: supply chains, engineering expertise, manufacturing capabilities, industrial clusters, customer networks, application scenarios, and economies of scale. These assets may not seem as glamorous as a new AI model, but they could form a more durable moat.

Today’s results from BYD are very clear. In August 2026, BYD’s global sales reached approximately 440,000 units, a year-over-year increase of 17.8%; however, what truly stands out is that its overseas sales for the month reached approximately 189,000 units, a year-over-year growth of over 134%. Moreover, in the first half of 2026, BYD experienced a significant milestone for the first time: overseas revenue surpassed domestic revenue in China.

This means Chinese tech manufacturing companies are entering the next phase. Previously, it was “Made in China, sold by global brands”; then it evolved to “Chinese brands, made in China, sold in the Chinese market”; now it’s advancing further to “Chinese brands, Chinese technology, Chinese supply chains, sold in global markets.” This is where “Made in China” truly deserves a revaluation by capital.

08 But we must also recognize: China has not won all technological competitions.

It is essential to remain clear-eyed. “Foreigners coming to China to learn technology” does not equate to “China has already surpassed the U.S. in all areas.” If this article is written as such, it has no value. The U.S. still holds a vast amount of the most advanced core intellectual property, possesses the world’s most powerful cluster of technology companies, leading university system, venture capital ecosystem, and formidable foundational research capabilities. In high-end AI chips, foundational software, certain scientific instruments, original algorithms, and cutting-edge scientific research, China still has significant gaps. Even those participating in China’s technology tours, as reported by Reuters, have themselves noted that non-Chinese tech companies still command substantial global market share, possess the most advanced intellectual property, and generate enormous profits.

What truly matters is not who has already “won,” but that the evaluation system for global technological competition is changing. In the past, a country’s technological strength was primarily measured by papers, patents, laboratories, and leading companies; in the future, a new metric must be added: the speed of industrialization. While technological leadership remains important, an increasing amount of commercial value ultimately depends on whether a technology can be transformed into stable, reproducible, and scalable real-world products within a sufficiently short timeframe.

09 In the future, what is truly at stake may be "technological time."

If we condense the technological competition of the past century, a fascinating pattern emerges: the First Industrial Revolution competed over machines, the Second over electricity and mass production, the Information Revolution over chips and software, the Internet Revolution over traffic and network effects, and the AI era may ultimately compete for something more abstract: time.

Whoever can train models faster, manufacture chips faster, build data centers faster, produce robots faster, reduce costs faster, or scale a technology to reach 100 million users faster—ultimately, the same variable determines competitive advantage: how long does it take from the emergence of a technology to its large-scale commercial application?

In the past, China’s greatest advantage was cost; in the future, the real advantage worth paying attention to may gradually become speed. And behind this speed is not simply “intense competition,” but the result of an entire industrial ecosystem working together.

A country that continuously shortens the cycle—from identifying a problem, to developing a product, to scaling it—is essentially competing for a new factor of production: technological time. Whoever can compress technological time the most will be more likely to gain a scale advantage first in the next round of industrial competition.

Why did the world start coming to China?

So now, when we look again at the foreign investors and entrepreneurs flying to Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, we realize that what they truly want to understand may not be any specific robot, not any particular electric vehicle, and not even any single star company. What they truly seek to comprehend is: why are all these things happening so intensely and simultaneously in China? Why can robots be rapidly mass-produced? Why can electric vehicles iterate so quickly? Why has a complete industrial chain formed around drones? Why can a hardware entrepreneur find suppliers so swiftly? Why can a new technology enter the real market and be tested so rapidly?

Behind these questions lies the same answer: China is evolving from the "world's factory" into a vast industrial laboratory.

In the past, the world sent designs to China, and China was responsible for manufacturing them. A new possibility is now emerging: research and development, design, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and iteration are beginning to form a closed loop in the same location. Once this loop is fully established, the significance becomes entirely different—because manufacturing is no longer just the final step in innovation; manufacturing itself begins to participate in innovation.

Today, the world is re-examining China—not truly focusing on the success of any single product, but rather on this efficiency mechanism that compresses technology, industry, and market together.

Conclusion

Twenty years ago, Chinese entrepreneurs went to Silicon Valley to learn how to create the future. Today, an increasing number of people are coming to China to study how to turn the future into reality faster. This may be the truly significant societal shift behind the phenomenon of "foreigners beginning to come to China to learn technology."

The truly powerful technological nations of the future will never be limited to just laboratories—they must possess two essential capabilities: the ability to achieve original innovation from 0 to 1, and the ability to scale that innovation from 1 to 1 million. The former determines the height of the technology, while the latter determines the speed at which it transforms the world—and it is precisely at the intersection of these two that capital ultimately seeks to invest.

Therefore, in the future, when evaluating the competitiveness of a country, a city, or even a technology company, we may need to add a new metric: how long does it take from the birth of an idea to the first product coming off the line, and then to selling the first million units? Whoever can continuously shorten this time will likely possess the most scarce resource in the next round of technological competition—the ability to bring the future into reality ahead of time.