For the first documentary in WIRED's future cities series, we headed to Shenzhen – the frenetic heart of China's tech industry.
Originally a quiet agrarian province in southern China, Shenzhen's population exploded in the 80s and 90s as migrant workers came to work in the city's industrial factories. Many of the factories were founded through a drastic change in economic policy by party leaders in what is defined as the 'Shenzhen Special Economic Zone'.
Now a mega-metropolis with a population of up to 20 million, Shenzhen has become famous for creating consumer electronics – often imitations of premium brands – at a phenomenal pace.
"People have realised that if you go to Shenzhen to prototype hardware you can do that at ten times the speed you can anywhere else,” director Jim Demuth told WIRED.
Inside Huaqiangbei, the vast market district that's home to every imaginable smartphone part, Demuth found that part of that speed is due to the way component sellers collaborate with each other.
A screen repair shop owner might pass a broken iPhone to four or five different sellers, each with their own specialism – one removes the screen, another uses a steam press to attach the new display and so on before it makes its way back to the customer.
The £13 paid by the customer is then split by the repair shop owner between each retailer involved along the way. An egalitarian way of working that embodies the collaborative spirit of Shenzhen.
Shenzhen has become the factory of the world where, if you can think of an idea, you can find someone – or lots of people – to make it. Want 5,000 iPhones branded with your company logo? Easy.
"They're quite happy to be specialist cogs in a large efficient machine where everyone is making money together, rather than wanting to be [or own] the machine itself," said Demuth.
Alongside countless smartphone repair shops, Huaqiangbei is crammed with retailers selling copycat versions of iPhones, Samsung Galaxies and countless other high-end smartphones. But the Chinese have their own word for the act of making of copycat products – they call it 'shanzhai'.
Shanzhai encapsulates a way of working that's fast, open and based on the sharing of resources and knowledge. The concept of intellectual property, Demuth explained, doesn't have the same implications in China as we think of it in the west.
The film attempts to unpack some of the mythologies about Shenzhen and bridge some gaps in cultural understanding between the two schools of thought.
One of the films contributors 'Bunnie' Huang added: "I do find the core tenets of sharing intellectual property they have is very enabling", hinting at a potential emerging paradigm shift when the fundamentals of tech innovation in the West clash with the Chinese models of business.
The documentary also goes inside Hax Hardware Accelerator – the first of its kind in the world – where global startups with proven prototypes are given $100,000 and support to take their products through to market launch.
One startup, Nura, is making the world's first tuneable headphones that personalise audio to each person's own hearing profiles. Another Hax startup, Rovenso, is creating roving robots that can be used to break down decommissioned nuclear power stations. The Shenzhen location gives these startups access to components in just hours, dramatically reducing the time it takes to bring concepts to market.
Part one of Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of hardware is out now with parts two to four coming soon.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
