The southeastern Chinese city of Shenzhen, known as the 'Silicon Valley' of the Asian country for its concentration of leading technology companies, announced an investment of 160 billion yuan ($22.075 billion, €21.010 billion) in technology throughout this year. The mentioned amount will be allocated to 'new types of infrastructure' with the aim for the city to 'fully compete' in emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI), stated Shenzhen's mayor, Qin Weizhong, during the annual local administration summit that began this Tuesday.
The report presented by the mayor sets the economic growth target for this fiscal year at 5.5%, with other goals such as the creation of 200,000 new jobs. The province in which this city is located, Guangdong, aims to grow by 5% this year despite not meeting its targets in the last three years amid a national context of economic slowdown, even though it is the main exporting region of China.
Furthermore, according to the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, Shenzhen is now facing the rise of other major Chinese technology hubs such as the eastern city of Hangzhou, home to emerging companies like the AI platform DeepSeek or the robotics company Unitree. Shenzhen transitioned from being a fishing village to one of the four major cities in China after becoming, in the 1980s, the first 'special economic zone' in the country by being located right at the border with the then-British colony of Hong Kong.
In the megacity, with a population of nearly 18 million residents -equivalent to that of the Netherlands-, important internationally recognized tech companies such as Huawei, Tencent, DJI, and BYD were born.
The entry The 'Chinese Silicon Valley' announces $22 billion in technology investment was first published in La Verdad Panamá.
