Where is China’s Silicon Valley?
Beijing has picked 17 tech hubs across the country to transform from a manufacturing-reliant economy to one led by tech and innovation
When Ben Hu and his ex-Google partners wanted to build something to completely disrupt the traditional language teaching industry by artificial intelligence, it was not Silicon Valley they turned to for help, but Shanghai.
In the metropolis that sits in China’s developed eastern region, Hu has seen his Liulishuo app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse the student’s learning idiosyncrasies and tailor the English-language teaching programme to his or her needs, grow into a profitable business with 600,000 paid users, four years after it was launched in 2013.
“I truly believe in many specific tech sectors, such as artificial intelligence; being in China offers entrepreneurs a bigger chance to leapfrog companies in Silicon Valley,” Hu said.
Silicon Valley is long seen as the world’s technology capital, home to some of the world’s mightiest technology companies, such as Facebook, Apple, Google and Netflix.
But China, without a defined “valley” gave Hu the confidence for a more successful business simply because it is one giant market with hundreds of millions of advanced digital users and a nationwide innovation campaign driven by its top decision makers.
