Brief Introduction to ShenZhen Bioindustry

Shenzhen is one of the first national bases for bioindustry. In recent years, the industry has developed rapidly at average annual growth of 20%. In 2015, biology and life health industry reached a scale of around RMB 200 billion. The bio industry is one of the emerging industries of strategic importance for priority development in Shenzhen and has received great attention from the municipal CPC committee and government. The advantageous resources the city offers attract large number of enterprises and talents to invest and work in Shenzhen.  

 Innovation is the engine driving development of the city. The sound market-oriented environment and complete financial system facilitated rapid economic growth for many years. The enormous social sector research and development investments and the sheer number of patent applications are examples of the exuberating energy of innovation. Service-oriented government of efficiency, rule of law based, free of corruption ensures balanced and sustainable development of the society. Shenzhen ranked top in the 2015 Top 10 Innovative Cities of China by China Institute of City Competitiveness, and top in Forbes’ ranking of innovative cities in China on three occasions. It is without question a city of innovation.  

The comfortable living environment further enhances the charm of the city. Shenzhen has a migrant culture that is young, positive and accommodating. The sound geographical and climate conditions, convenient transport, high-quality education and medical resources are all offered in this beautiful garden city by the coastline. Shenzhen is recognized as “one of the three cities in Mainland China most favored by foreign talents” by International Talent. Large number of foreigners and residents of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan live and work in Shenzhen. The smiles of satisfaction of families and comprehensive personal development are no doubt the greatest acknowledgement and support for one’s career. 

 Shenzhen has for many years developed complete and sound policy support systems and industry ancillary environment for biology and life health industry investments and venture businesses. The three important government documents: the Plans for Revitalizing and Developing the Bio -industry in Shenzhen (2009 – 2015) and the Policy for Revitalizing and Developing the Bio -industry in Shenzhen launched in 2009, the Plans for Development of Life Health Industry in Shenzhen (2013 – 2020) issued in 2013, and the Several Measures for Promoting Technological Innovations issued in 2016, brought about all-dimensional support for the biology and life health industry. Particularly, in the human resources aspect, Shenzhen’s “Peacock plan” is well known both in China and abroad. A large number of high level talents have received practical support here. The multi-level science and technology plans offered by the city aid companies’ growth and promote innovation by practical measures. 

By the end of 2015, Shenzhen had over 320 national, provincial and municipal-level engineering laboratories, key laboratories, engineering research centers, public service platforms and other innovative platforms in bioindustry, among which 21 are national level ones; 13 universities; innovation spaces such as the Shenzhen High-Tech Bio-incubator and Pingshan National Bio-Industry Base; and 51 bio-pharmaceutical enterprises licensed for pharmaceutical manufacturing. The 2014 statistics show that Shenzhen has in total 2,532 medical institutions and 122 hospitals. Shenzhen witnessed the birth of numerous outstanding innovative enterprises such as Neptunus, Hepalink, Hybio Pharmaceutical, BGI-Shenzhen, Beike Biotechnology and Chipscreen Biotechnology etc. Welcome to invest and start business in Shenzhen. Welcome to join the big family of Shenzhen’s biology and life health industry to reach further onto the paramount of your business. 

Shenzhen Moves Beyond Its Manufacturing Past, Embraces Design Future

The young Chinese city is shedding its reputation for cheap or counterfeit goods and being recognized as an international design and manufacturing powerhouse.

By Brendan Cormier

 

For years, the popular image of Shenzhen wasn’t pretty. Named China’s first Special Economic Zone in 1980, the city—formerly a territory of fishing villages just north of Hong Kong—grew rapidly into a sprawling manufacturing megalopolis. Millions of Chinese migrants resettled here to take up low-wage factory jobs, often leaving their families behind in smaller villages and towns. Global news reports about pollution, poor working conditions, and worker suicides exacerbated the city’s image as an anonymous and brutal place.

In recent years, however, a transformation has been taking shape. Shenzhen is attempting to redefine itself as a vibrant design hub. In 2005, it launched the now-well-established Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (with Hong Kong joining two years after). Three years later, UNESCO anointed Shenzhen a “City of Design,” including it in its Creative Cities Network. Shenzhen Fashion Week and Shenzhen Design Week have only recently kicked off, but they are competing with their more seasoned counterparts in Beijing and Shanghai. For the past two years, I have also been involved. In 2014, I began working at the Victoria and Albert Museum, collaborating with the Chinese state-owned enterprise China Merchants Group to open a new cultural platform in the city called Design Society.

Behind this surge of enthusiasm lies the fact that the city is not just producing a growing number of interesting design practices—for instance, architects Urbanus and NODE, graphic designer Bi Xuefeng, and art and design collective Ffixxed Studios—but also proving fertile ground for making things. After decades of serving as the factory of the world, the city now boasts a robust infrastructure of workshops, supply chains, and know-how, a lucrative attraction for young entrepreneurs and makers. This is most pronounced in the electronics sector, where rife competition and access to labor and supplies have bolstered the emergence of major tech companies, including Huawei for telecommunications, DJI for domestic drones, and Tencent, the developer of the country’s most popular social networking app, WeChat. Their success, matched by the pace of innovation throughout the city, has led many to dub Shenzhen China’s Silicon Valley.

At the core of all this is the electronics market at Huaqiangbei. Spread over several city blocks in the Futian district, the market has become a global hub for the sale and distribution of electronic parts and products. The market is also infamous for shanzhai, the practice of making counterfeit goods. Stroll through its maze like corridors lined with tiny packed booths, and you’ll find endless variations on fake iPhones, Apple watches, Beats headphones, and Bose speakers, to name a few.

Shanzhai emerged in the early 2000s, partly as a result of factory engineers quitting their jobs making products for foreign brands, and applying their acquired knowledge to make cheaper knockoffs. During this time, generic circuit boards, casings, and parts from a growing stock of suppliers were flooding the market, making it cheap and easy to produce fakes. As soon as copies were made, however, tweaks and modifications were introduced. A fake iPhone might contain space for three SIM cards; a fake Nokia would be pimped with a louder speaker. These modified goods were tested in the booths of the market, and sales acted as a quick feedback loop, instructing the workshops on which tweaks worked and which didn’t.

A manufacturing unit that works with HAX.                                         Courtesy HAX

Gradually, the focus of shanzhai has moved away from copying big brands. Rather than perpetuating the stereotype of China as a copycat nation, many now argue that shanzhai is a powerful force behind Shenzhen’s design success. Through constantly tweaking and testing knockoffs, the industry has ended up inventing entirely new products, exported around the world. There’s a cell phone for seniors, for instance, with big buttons, an SOS quick-dial, and a loudspeaker.

There’s also a large-battery phone that lasts for 40 days and comes with a cool retro casing and a built-in flashlight. The latest success at Huaqiangbei is the portable karaoke microphone. It’s a microphone combined with a Bluetooth speaker that connects to your smartphone. It appeared in the market last summer, and now spontaneous karaoke parties can be heard throughout the city. When product ideas like these take off, shanzhai companies also begin to rapidly copy one another. You can find slight variations on the karaoke microphone throughout the market, produced by hundreds of different workshops, and it’s often difficult to identify who the original author was. Creativity, in this sense, comes from the collective and not from any individual.

The flagrant abuse of intellectual property rights at Huaqiangbei, while infuriating many, has garnered sympathy from a global community of makers who have been championing notions of open-source sharing, Creative Commons licensing, and innovation through iteration for over a decade. This community has, in fact, found new life in Shenzhen. In 2008, Eric Pan founded Seeed Studios with the goal of tapping into Shenzhen’s rich supply chain network to sell parts to global makers, and in doing so, helped champion maker culture in China. In 2011, Seeed started the Chaihuo Maker space, one of the first of its kind in the city. And a year after, it established the country’s first Maker Faire, which has grown to be the largest in Asia. In 2015, Premier Li Keqiang visited Chaihuo and endorsed the development of maker spaces as a key way to innovate and grow the Chinese economy.

Others have also sought to tap into Shenzhen’s unique assets. In 2011, a French angel investor named Cyril Ebersweiler set up the HAX Accelerator in an office space adjacent to Huaqiangbei. His idea was to select people from around the world with good product ideas, and invite them to spend 111 days in Shenzhen exploring how to scale their designs into production. Being located next to the market meant that participants could quickly contact manufacturers and suppliers, and test different iterations of their prototypes. One of the first participants at HAX, Jasen Wang, was invited to develop his idea for a DIY robotics kit. His company Makeblock now has over 200 employees and is selling to schools in Europe and North America. Other ideas tested at HAX recently include an at-home insect harvesting kit (for eating), solar-powered agricultural sensors, and a cell-phone-controlled sex toy. The accelerator brought 82 start-ups to exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this past January.

With this kind of output, a lot of hope is riding on Shenzhen to become a new design powerhouse. However, the culture of copying and modifying, which has been identified by many as a key strength, also poses a threat. Companies like DJI, whose popular Phantom drone helped popularize aerial photography, have had to work extra hard to protect their engineering secrets—and yet DJI knockoffs can still be spotted throughout Huaqiangbei. HAX holds lectures from lawyers who advise the participants how to protect their patents from being stolen by Chinese manufacturers. For Shenzhen to realize its ambition of becoming a desirable design capital, it will need to prove that it is a place not only where stuff can get made but also where designers can feel some certainty that their ideas will be protected.

• The 38-year-old manufacturing metropolis was named a UNESCO City of Designuurman

 

ShenZhen Fashion Industry

Shenzhen's fashion industry has been an industry leader in the country. A fashion industry ecosystem featured by fashion new products, fashion trends, business exchanges, and fashion consumption agglomeration has also formed. At present, the industry chain is upgrading to the value chain.

INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

Shenzhen has an annual output of 850 million pieces of different kinds of underwear, with an annual output value of nearly 45 billion yuan, accounting for about 15 percent of the country's total and one third of Guangdong Province. Shenzhen's underwear industry has become the demonstration area of the country's first batches of industrial cluster brand building areas, occupying 60 percent of market share in the domestic high-end underwear market with leading enterprises such as Embry Form, Regina Miracle, HUIJIE, and Cosmo Lady.

There are about 900 clock and watch enterprises in Shenzhen, which is the major production and supporting base of clocks and watches in the world, accounting for more than 40 percent of the world's watches and clocks. In addition, the "Made in Shenzhen" clock and watch brands account for 65 percent of the domestic brands.

The clothing industry also stands out. Shenzhen currently has more than 2000 clothing enterprises, 300,000 employees, and over 1000clothing brands. Fashion R&D, design, and production are also in the lead in China. In 2016, Shenzhen has 1000 brand enterprises. The gross sales in the clothing industry reached nearly 230 billion yuan, with exports close to US$ 10 billion. Additionally, Shenzhen's women's clothing brands are thriving. Besides having a more-than-60-percent market share at the shopping malls in China's first-tier cities, they began to rise in the international fashion arena. The sales margins of Marisfrolg once again topped in the country, with the total profit ranked 14th. The profit margins and total profits of brands such as Yinger, ELLASSAY, China-silk, SEASON WIND, Embry Form, KALTENDIN, CHLOSIO and many other brands were ranked among the top 100in the country. In 2015, Marisfrolg acquired Italy high-end ready-to-wear brand Krizia, while ELLASSAY acquired European high-end brand Laur鑜, which has become the first case of a domestic clothing brand merging an international well-known brand.

SHENZHEN FASHION WEEK

In order to enhance the transformation and development of the creative industry led by fashion design, and to promote the popularity and internationalization of Shenzhen, the first Shenzhen fashion week, hosted by the municipal government and jointly organized by the Economic, Trade and Information Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, Shenzhen Garment Industry Association, and global fashion leader IMG company from March 19 to 24, 2015, was successfully held at OCT Harbor. Brands and designers from more than 20 countries and regions including Italy, France and the UK have participated in the fashion week. The main venue, which was customized according to international standards, covered 6000 square meters and showcased nearly 50 cutting-edge international fashion product releases.

The A/W 2016 Shenzhen Fashion Week was held at OCT Bay from March 19 to 25, 2016. Over 200 brands and designers from 10 countries and regions have presented a fashion gala lasting for a week with more than 60 fantastic fashion shows.

From March 17 to 23, 2017, the A/W 2017 Shenzhen Fashion Week was held at Coconut Beach, OCT Bay.

SIUF CHINA (SHENZHEN) INTERNATIONAL BRAND UNDERWEAR FAIR

The three-day2016 China Underwear Culture Week and SIUF China (Shenzhen) International Brand Underwear Fair was held on May 5, 2016 at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center. More than 800 exhibitors, 100,000 professional visitors, and 300 media have gathered in the grand event.

New designers to dazzle Shenzhen Fashion Week

By Chen Hong (China Daily)





 Models at the 2015 Shenzhen Fashion Week. [Photo provided to China Daily]


Shenzhen Fashion Week 2016 for the fall and winter seasons will be held from March 18 to 25 in the city in the Guangdong province.

The annual event, launched last year, fuses aesthetics from the East and West and showcases the biggest style trends, organizers said.

Held in Shenzhen, one of UNESCO's Cities of Design, the fashion week is sponsored by the city government and organized by the Shenzhen Garment Industry Association and IMG, a global leader in fashion. The weeklong event will promote original fashion brands, stage a runway show and offer new designs.

The main venue will be set up at OCT Harbor, an iconic entertainment center in the city's downtown area that is 6,000 square meters in size.

More than 200 fashion designers will stage 60 shows during the fashion week, which is slated to attract at least 10,000 professional media professionals, buyers, trendsetters, supermodels and heavyweights from the global fashion industry.

Organizers have invited fashion institutes from home and abroad to set up showrooms to display the latest works from designers as well as lifestyle items centered on the theme of "creation, design and fashion".

According to organizers, this year's fashion week will invite a growing number of designers and diversified styles.

Shenzhen has developed into a fashion hub in China, with original fashion brands, industrial clusters and low-to-high-end manufacturing sites.

According to official statistics, the city has nearly 3,000 garment companies that employ about 300,000 workers and produce roughly 2,000 garment brands.

The garment industry generated more than 210 billion yuan ($31.9 billion) in revenue in 2014, a year-on-year increase of 11 percent. Exports from the city's garment industry totaled $10 billion in 2014.

Shenzhen now in fashion

By Mariella Radaelli (China Daily Europe)


Young, vibrant designers from the southern Chinese city make their debut at Milan Fashion Week

China's young but vibrant fashion industry was traditionally centered in Shanghai and Beijing, but now Shenzhen is strutting its stuff on international catwalks.

A raft of labels from the southern Chinese city made their Milan Fashion Week debuts this year, including pret-a-porter brand Ellassay, Xie Haiping and La Pargay.

Chinese designers at Milan Fashion week including Xie Haiping; Lai Rui, founder of La Pargay; and Wang Dusen, brand image management center director for the brand Ellassay. Imax Tree / For China Daily

Work by 18 young Shenzhen designers was also showcased on Milan's catwalks, in an event organized by the nonprofit Shenzhen Garment Industry Association.

The show in late September comes after Shenzhen labels featured at the London and New York fashion weeks, and amid a growing international appetite for quality made-in-China goods.

Shenzhen's creativity will be part of the Milan event every year from now on, says Francesco Fiordelli, an Italian designer and ambassador for the Shenzhen garment industry in Europe. He says, "Milan means internationalization and visibility."

China's fashion textile sector has been "extremely lively" since the new government policies made the sector "absolutely strategic", he says.

"The industry (in Shenzhen) has developed over the past five years, at an increase of 37 percent," he says. "Specifically, sales of women's clothing brands in China have risen more than 26 percent, while footwear and accessories are up more than 41 percent."

Women's brands now have substantial market power, Fiordelli says, explaining that women's garments account for 85 percent of production in the city, which is also home to 85 percent of Chinese women's fashion companies.

"Shenzhen is the most important women's garment-producing district in China," as it has shaped an entire supply chain, stretching from fabric production to distribution, he says.

The city is home to 3,500 clothing brands and 15,000 designers, mostly in Dalang Fashion Valley. It is also known as the Chinese capital of interior design.

"Working on the internationalization of Shenzhen brands is my life's mission," says Shen Yongfang, president of the Shenzhen Garment Industry Association, which along with promoting brands works to protect trademarks and other intellectual property against cheap, unauthorized knockoffs.

Over the years, Shen has invited many European experts to the city to build collaborative relationships with local designers.

She is also the founder the China International Brand Clothing and Accessories Fair, now in its 16th year, which attracts 1,200 exhibitors and about 5 million visitors to Shenzhen. She also helped establish the Shenzhen Clothing R&D Center and the Shenzhen Clothing and Garment Industry Cluster in the early 2000s.

"The brands in the cluster, such as Marisfrolg and Yinger Group, have experienced rapid growth in the past decade. They have achieved billions of yuan in annual sales," Shen says.

Meanwhile, Shen says Chinese women can find true elegance without having to wear European brands.

"They are already behaving that way around the world," she says. "An elegant woman may wear a pair of superb Ferragamo shoes and a simple qipao (traditional Chinese dress) made with our unique silk. And that's it. Look at our first lady (Peng Liyuan); she is a model of elegance".

She is also confident about the future development of Dalang Fashion Valley.
"China's fashion industry is becoming more international thanks to connections and the regular exchanges of expertise, especially from Europe, the birthplace of fashion," Shen says. "China is not only a big garment country. Soon, we will become a powerful garment country. Ethnic and cultural elements are the source of fashion inspiration."

Qu Xin, the mayor of Shenzhen, says the city will continue to support the fashion industry and invest in the production chain. Part of this effort will be to train the next generation of designers and industry professionals, such as tailors, cutters and pattern makers, he says.

"We have become the most creative fashion hub in China," he says. "We'll achieve the impossible by establishing Shenzhen as an international center and a pole of attraction through the development of a fashion city, along with consolidation of fashion week and the fashion fair."

Italian fashion academy Istituto Marangoni has also opened a training center in the city.

Shenzhen, which neighbors Hong Kong, grew from a fishing village into a modern metropolis after former leader Deng Xiaoping launched his reform and opening-up policies.

"Deng was the 'ferryman' of economic development," Shen says. "He nourished an economic boom that radically improved the lives of citizens. Shenzhen today is a reflection of Deng's extraordinary vision."

Why You Should Launch Your Hardware Startup In Shenzhen

James Giancotti   Contributor

Shenzhen still strikes many as the city that was first designated to be China’s Special Economic Zone in 1980. Thanks to this reputation, the city has enjoyed the mix of libertarian policies that enabled its transformation from a sleepy fishing village into the hardware tech capital of China that it is today. This leading trade and manufacturing hub has visitor footprints from many neighboring cities such as Hong Kong, Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Dongguan, and is now being inundated with an influx of serious technologists from all over the world.

In this article, I’ll examine some of the aspects that enable Shenzhen – whose reported R&D spending tops $10 billion, or 4 percent of GDP – to flourish as a tech startup ecosystem.

Figure 1. R&D Spending of Hong Kong, Singapore and Shenzhen. Source: IMF, OECD, Census and Statistics Department (Hong Kong), CEIC, Our HK Foundation

Shenzhen has strong support from the government
Its reputation as a global manufacturing hub gives this city an amazing edge in developing hardware related startups. Some well-known names are Lepow, Oaxis, SZBeacon, and Foream. With a population of some 12 million - consider this against its population four decades ago at only 30,000 - this bustling city offers low-cost mass production with the added benefit of being surrounded by a well-developed network of crowdfunding platforms.

Of course, its strong supplier base is important and without a doubt is a crucial factor which has contributed to building its reputation as a manufacturing hub – however I also believe there’s more to this city than the cheap labor force ideology on the surface. The city’s government has put in tremendous effort in making the leap forward to making Shenzhen a manufacturing ecosystem matching none other in the world. There are clusters of factories turning the area into a one-stop shop for many innovative projects, and these often involve startups.

The ChiNext board on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange is, without a question, a big startup exit opportunity. In 2009, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange opened the ChiNext board which is a NASDAQ-type exchange for high-growth and high-tech startups to attract innovative and fast-growing enterprises. The listing rules are less stringent than the main board, and is serving its purpose as a prime exit route for venture investments in Shenzhen. The listings grew from 28 in 2009 to 295 as of February 2016, with close to 70% of all listed companies being in the manufacturing sector, followed by those in the IT segment.

Crowdfunding is a major source of capital, but there is still a funding gap between production stages
Crowdfunding is yet another huge driving factor for the growth of the startup ecosystem in Shenzhen. Two hundred and eighty registered crowdfunding platforms have been founded in China to date, according to Xinhua, and approximately 75 remain active and operational. Nearly half of these 75 are based in Shenzhen, some famous names including Angelclub, RenRentou, and Yunchou. The total fundraise through these crowdfunding platforms in China has amounted to $2.12 billion last year, and this is bright news for the hardware startup projects. These hardware projects especially can benefit from the surroundings of typical crowdfunding campaigns where entrepreneurs are constantly provided with feedback from customers and investors alike, even in the pre-order stages. This can provide a positive feedback loop whereby businesses can quickly gain valuable insights as to how to enhance their products.

Take note, however, that there is a funding gap between the innovation and mass-production stages in Shenzhen. While crowdfunding is great news for the stakeholders in hardware startup projects, we see prolonged difficulties in hardware startups looking to secure funding for later stage production. We take note that the surge in the number of hardware startup projects in Shenzhen may be due to a spike in the first-time entrepreneurs who often do not have a full understanding nor expertise in mass-scale production that is often inevitable in manufacturing processes. Indeed, crowdfunding can power them through the seed-stage or what I’d like to call “innovation stage” – but what about the mass-production?

Unfortunately, there is presently not much variety in terms of later stage funding for hardware projects in Shenzhen but this will improve as more success stories boost investor confidence.

Integrated Digital TV's on a showcase by Skyworth in Shenzhen, China. Source: China Photos/Getty Images

The grandeur of Shenzhen’s labor force is actually a two-sided story
Shenzhen’s expansive labor force is more than ideal for manufacturers. And it certainly is not a myth when you consider this – Foxconn in Shenzhen once hired 3,000 contract workers overnight to fulfill a last minute order notice from its largest buyer. You’d be scratching your head because there is just no other city where you can realistically expect to achieve such a feat of miracle. To appreciate the grandeur of the scale, the city’s 4 million manufacturing workforce is an equivalent sum to all of South Korea’s manufacturing crowd at a national level.

On the other hand, a looming concern for many global manufacturers – who often tend to operate a highly labor-intensive production – is in the sharply rising wage. Talent retention becomes an issue, and migration of contract manufacturing is seeing bigger movements to other inland cities within China or even Vietnam and Cambodia where labor costs are lower.

In the long run, I believe the city government’s indispensable role as the strategic investor into nurturing newly fledgling ideas in hardware startup projects will very much determine the current situation in Shenzhen’s labor market.

James Giancotti, CEO of Oddup. Oddup rates startups, investors, eco-systems and accelerators.

Shenzhen And Silicon Valley Are Merging Into One Giant Maker's Hub: Call It 'Calichina'

Salvatore Babones Contributor

 

 

This photo taken on April 22, 2015 shows people selling goods at a shop in the Huaqiangbei electronics market in Shenzhen. (FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)

 

European state-owned aircraft manufacturer Airbus recently announced the location for its China innovation center. The lucky city is Shenzhen, Hong Kong's younger but bigger brother just across the border in Guangdong province. Shenzhen is a booming metropolis of 12-15 million people (it's growing so fast that no one really knows) that is less than 40 years old.

People say that Shenzhen was nothing more than a small fishing village in 1979. In fact, it was an agglomeration of more than 300 villages and 300,000 people. But no matter how you tell the story, the growth has been phenomenal.

Read more on Forbes: A Look Inside Shenzhen's High-Tech Empire

Today Shenzhen is the world's up and coming maker hub, a place where people go to make things (usually electronic). Its Huaqiangbei market is famous as the place where you can buy anything and everything electronic in quantities ranging from one to one million. Shenzhen is also home to Apple contractor Foxconn, Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, and a host of other tech companies. No wonder Airbus wants a piece of the action.

An Airbus A330neo lands at Toulouse-Blagnac airport, southwestern France, after successfully completing its first flight, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Fred Scheiber)

Airbus' innovation center in Shenzhen is the company's second. Given that the company is headquartered in Toulouse in southern France and part-owned by the French, German and Spanish governments, you would think that its first innovation center would be in Europe, perhaps in Paris' Silicon Sentier or Berlin's Silicon Allee. But it's not. Airbus' main global innovation center is in the heart of Silicon Valley, in good old San Jose, California.

Airbus makes planes in places like Toulouse, Hamburg, and Mobile, Alabama. In China, it has an assembly line in the northern city of Tianjin, where it operates in a joint venture with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). Though mainly a manufacturer of military jets, state-owned AVIC is also shareholder in the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), manufacturer of the C919, China's first home-grown civilian jetliner.

Read more on Forbes: Why You Should Launch Your Hardware Startup In Shenzhen
Why isn't Airbus' global innovation center in Europe, or its China innovation center in Tianjin? The answer is that the real value in a jetliner isn't the aluminum tube of the body or the sleek aeronautics of the wings. It is in the electronics, everything from the avionics that control fuel consumption to the onboard wi-fi and entertainment systems. And tomorrow the value will be in the networks that link it all together.
Airbus isn't in Silicon Valley to develop new aircraft designs. It's there to develop self-piloting personal air transport technology (codename: Vahana), an airspace management system for autonomous aircraft operation (codename: Altiscope), and an Uber-like helicopter ride-sharing service (codename: Voom). These are real Silicon Valley projects, not European Silicon Valley knockoffs. And you can bet that the Airbus Shenzhen center will play a role in making them into reality.

Shenzhen and Silicon Valley are fast merging into one giant trans-Pacific makers hub. Call it Calichina. The ideas are developed in California. The things are made in China. We're not talking production lines (though those are in China, too). We're talking models, prototypes and will-it-fly proofs-of-concept. And it's not just Airbus making the Calichina connection. It's everyone from technology giant Apple to agribusiness giant Cargill and every industry in between.

Shenzhen and Silicon Valley are symbiotic because although dreams are still made in California, things can only be made in China. The days when you could build an Apple I in California out of locally-sourced parts are long gone, but apparently someone was able to build an iPhone 6s out of spare parts acquired in Shenzhen. Assemble Silicon Valley's ideas using Shenzhen's materials, and you can make the future in Calichina.

Salvatore Babones is the author of The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts. Sign up for his Global Asia Newsletter or follow him on Twitter @sbabones.