Zhongguancun: Beijing’s innovation hub is at the centre of China’s aim to become a tech powerhouse
- It is home to nearly 9,000 high tech firms, including some of China’s biggest internet firms, such as Nasdaq-listed Baidu and Sina
A combination of talent, money and government support makes Zhongguancun the closest equivalent in China to Silicon Valley.
At the entrance to the Garage Café in Beijing’s Zhongguancun, a slogan reads “you are just one garage away from entrepreneurship, one coffee away from innovation”.
With its name inspired by Steve Jobs’ Apple Garage, the cafe located on the 220-metre-long Zhongguancun Inno Way, a government-backed incubation zone for start-ups, is not designed for everyday coffee chat but more as a place to help ideas meet capital with the aim of finding the next big thing in technology.
“In the good old days, techies could land investment with nothing but ideas. Now investors are getting picky as we enter a capital winter. But Zhongguancun is still the place to be for anyone who wants to set up their own tech business in China,” said Zhang Xiyang, manager of Garage Café.
Founded 30 years ago with a mission to “learn from Silicon Valley and replicate Silicon Valley”, Zhongguancun is at the forefront of Beijing’s drive to turn the country from ‘workshop of the world’ into a global technology powerhouse.