This is my friend's story. He owns a company that designs and manufactures various electro-mechanical things. So he went there to check quality of his order that was getting ready for shipping. All went nice and shiny and then as he was about to head back to an airport he mentioned that he now has to find where to buy 150,000 non standard size batteries for the things being made. So the the owner said wait a min. Dials his buddy with another factory that happen to manufacture batteries and explains the task. So they set up the line and in 3 hours he had the whole amount made and put in crates.
Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind stealing the design and doing it themselves.
> Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind stealing the design and doing it themselves.
It is possible that these things are related.
Everything is so efficient because rent-seeking on "intellectual property" is not an option. You have to execute well or somebody else will do it better.
it reminds me of the early / glory days of piracy. I've seen a lot of kids just torrenting software for their needs and just getting started with video game programming, music, or other fields. What I liked about it, is that you could just get started with something right away, with the right tools without having to think about the financial aspect of things.
Last time I check unreal engine works a bit like that, it is free to download and use as long as you don't make more than x amount of money per year, when you start making decent money you'll give a percentage to Epic. I wish more things would work this way.
Autodesk's actions are most probably a response to feeling the heat from stable, multi-faceted & open source Modelling, Animation and Sculpting tool, Blender which is completely free, receiving considerable attention from industry recently (after v2.8)
This is not really what happened. I have toured many battery factories in Dongguan - they have stock on-hand even of non standard sizes. I have been shown the actual inventory spreadsheets from product managers. Also, buying batteries from a friend of a friend is very risky...batteries are the most risky thing to buy, at least li-ion, you are almost guaranteed to violate International shipping laws.
Well I am just selling the story my friend told me. Since it happened a while ago I assume that the batteries were fine or I would hear much bitching from the same friend of mine ;)
> he now has to find where to buy 150,000 non standard size batteries for the things being made.
Non-standard you say? Clever. Now the guy who sold him the electronics just made a whole bunch of money not only from your friend, but also from the a batteries buddy.
This form of capitalism is anathema to those who consider the world rich enough, and therefore misunderstand that hard work is as much a part of capitalist wealth as anything else. Those 150,000 batteries didn't make themselves, and the guys who knew how to get it done in a few hours wouldn't be in that condition if they didn't earn the capital required to make it happen ..
In spirt agreed, I don't know when `in letter` developing software will catch up with this efficiency. That will need a paradigm shift and looking back 50 years, one would have assumed it the other way round; this opinion is from a novice like me who is only exposed to SW and in a very limited capacity to HW world.
> it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China
I think what you describe is flexibility, not advancement. The distinction is important.
Advanced manufacturing implies that (assuming the batteries were manufactured from scratch) it was possible to either create a new automated manufacturing line quickly to manufacture exactly those batteries or that a generic line was available that was designed to be able to manufacture any battery needed with minimal changes/set-up time.
Flexibility, on the other hand, can easily/quickly be achieved by using lots of cheap labor if people are used to following instructions. If you have a battery plant that operates entirely manually, then retasking it temporarily to produce a different size or shape of battery is not very hard, provided it's not a really strange size or shape that requires different engineering or specialized manufacturing.
You just change a couple of stages in the process to use different parts or shapes of materials. The people can easily adapt, they're people, and placing parts X,Y, and Z together to make a battery isn't much different from placing parts A,B, and C together to do the same. Packaging and testing are nearly identical.
It's not advanced, though... it's very flexible and cheap, but very low tech.
There's nothing wrong with that, but terms are important. The Chinese electronics industry is advancing quickly, but not that fast.
Even if the maps are outdated, I think the point-to-translate pages serve as a really nice, condensed English<->Chinese glossary of electronics.
This helps not only foreigners, but also native Chinese like myself who have received their higher education in English. You see, I usually can’t hold a conversation about electronics or computer science in Chinese, even though my mother tongue is Cantonese and I’m generally fluent in Mandarin.
I remember him from the original Xbox hacking. I believe he was the one that originally figured out how to load custom software on it, and maybe even got sued?
What some of the previous reportage ("What $50 buys you in Huaqiangbei") misses about what makes the place unique, is it's less about what you can buy there, and more about what you can make there. There are oddball consumer electronics for sale, but you can find them, or substitutes, almost anywhere. What isn't everywhere is access to components and their manufacturers. There are almost countless booths that will sell you whole reels or cut tape of components, trays of chips, display technologies in various sizes in quantities big or small ... the list goes on. Walking around, you'll see people are leaving the markets with armfuls of component reels headed off toward labs and factories elsewhere. Unless you live across town from Digikey or Mouser, there is no way you can get things that quickly for prototyping. The upper floors of the buildings are more occupied by reps from manufacturers or factories, so if there's something custom you want, there's someone you can talk to in person about it.
On one hand, it's inspiring to see and take in. But for any complicated project, being able to manage ordering online and see exact part specs probably beats same-day access, when you have to schlep through the chaos to get it yourself. I have heard that things are moving in that direction in Shenzhen, and the concept of a central market is perhaps past its prime.
I spent a day at the Huaqiangbei market and honestly there's very little like it in the world. I didn't go in looking for anything in particular, but left with all sorts of tools and parts that I didn't even know I needed. A full USB power debugger with colour screen ($8), various LED module samples, a few Android tablets with a 9" screen, dual SIM and microSD ($30): my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour)... as well as a whole number of little parts and cabling and components I didn't even know existed. Others have written more about it (https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqia... is the classic article) but if you're even faintly interested in electronics I'd wholeheartedly recommend it.
my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour)
One huge difference I've noticed between HQB (and other smaller electronics markets I've been to elsewhere in China) and whatever repair shops still exist in the West is how much more interactive the whole experience is. I once went to HQB with a friend who wanted to get his laptop fixed, and the serviceperson (who also happened to be female --- another thing first-time visitors may be surprised by is the nearly 50/50 gender ratio) would take it apart and diagnose while talking to us, showing exactly what the problem was. They had run out of the part that needed replacement, but instead of telling us to come back later, she left her stall and lead us to another store in the same building to buy a reel of it, then went back and replaced it, showed us that it now worked, and asked a very reasonable price. The shop had several stalls of others doing the same thing, and a pretty long line of people waiting too.
It's a huge contrast to more "Western" repair experiences, where you're lucky to have it done on the same day, much less get to see the process or be told what the problem was.
They do this because repair fraud is still a huge problem in China. If they take your laptop or iPhone into a back room to repair it, 9 times out of 10 they are going to swap out other components with faulty ones (hence getting more repair business down the line along with a non faulty component to use later). I’ve been caught by that scam once in Beijing when I needed my baseband replaced, they swapped out the entire internals and it broke again a week later.
Everyone in the know insists on being there for the repairs to make sure no shenanigans occur. So the reputable places do it in front of you and explain what they are doing so you don’t feel cheated later if something else breaks.
I've got very similar experience in Akihabara, Tokyo.
Trivial thing happened to my headphones. The wire broke very close to the jack plug because of the frequent bending. There was a young guy there, I told him what happened using my broken Japanese, he patiently listened, took the headphones, made some basic check on them, took my phone number and told me to come in 30 minutes. In 20 minutes I got call that it's done. When it came to payment he asked me how much, I think, I should pay. I've been oblivious so he proposed 500 JPY, which is close to nothing, considering that I've had no tools and spare parts.
London, UK - the same situation happened. I've been told to throw it away.
UK spent over 50 years looking down on "doing" trades, the engineers, technicians, repairers etc, and been brainwashed that converting to a service economy is better for all. Industry and manufacturing was closed as a matter of policy, even in sectors we still competed well.
UK has destroyed the supply chains, the experience, or the ability to train or employ such people any more except in very exceptional cases. End result is few have even seen a jack plug or mains plug that's not moulded or would know where to start.
So we have shops that have no idea how to fix a broken plug or cable, and jewellers that have to return a watch to the manufacturer for a battery change. I'd guess in 1980-1990 most shops on Tottenham Court Road could have soldered a new one, along with most similar shops around the country now they're all just box shifters.
This is not specific to UK, I'd hazard that the whole western world is like that.
You litteraly cannot find ANY electronics shop in Paris (there were still a few ones a few years ago), and no one apart from some non-profits initiative is willing to even open a piece of electronics to do some simple repairs that involve soldering (the only repair being done is changing a part on phones/tablets/computers).
It's really depressing, because a lot repairs are really simple (unsolder a capacitor that is visibly broken, solder a new one in, or even replace a fuse in audio equipment) and instead those objects are trashed, contributing to the growing ecological problems.
That state of affair comes from both an economic lens (manpower is too costly compared to buying a new one), and a skill shortage (people watch me like an alien when I do those simple repairs)
Sorry for late reply, I was away on holidays. It's Bromley East St. Small PC/laptop repair shop. I couldn't find any general electronic/electric repair shop. They told me that cables are too thin and the thing is not worth the work in general. As a result I've got a soldering iron and working headphones at home - fixed it myself.
Sort of. I feel like it’s a technical education thing.
The fellow in Shenzhen is probably getting paid hundreds of dollars per month. (Just a guess, I know SZ is expensive, but has lots of labour coming from outer lying areas).
Even if it cost 10x labour for the procedure of turning a 16gb iPhone into a 128gb, it would be worth it.
But I don’t think you could train the average Western worker to become a BGA solder worker and reflasher and have them work for you for more than 6 months before racing to a higher paying job.
This. I worked at a small cell phone repair store. We could replace lots of parts in say an iPhone 7, but nearly no soldering. Parts are relatively cheap (lcd might be 35$ for the 7 when I was there) - and we were only paid up to 12/14$ an hour (that's nearing McDonald's level).
There is little proper education for something like BGA soldering, and if there is then you're more likely to get a job as an engineer.
Meanwhile, in my town (pop 1.4 million in South America) nobody can fix anything anymore and the electronics shops are turning into lighting or computer stores.
I couldn't get a ribbon cable last month from what used to be the best electronics shop in town!
Yes! Well acquainted! They were the go-to wholesalers when I was in film/tv. It’s just not the same as wandering into the shop and getting to know people there. Especially for personal interest/development or hobby projects.
To be clear, Radioshack and Circuit City were two distinct companies in the US. From a cursory look at Wikipedia, Circuit City was liquidated in 2009 (and later revived), and Radioshack is still operating stores.
Yeah—that Wikipedia link goes into the more complex history.
I just remember the RadioShack near my hometown that was full of walls of components. Now you're lucky to find a blank F-connector at The Source in the largest city in the country. Sentimentality got to me.
That said—for other Torontonians, or visitors, there's an awesome (edit: AWESOME) shop on College St between Spadina and Bathurst called Creatron: https://www.creatroninc.com/ (and surprisingly don't discount Long and McQuade [repair shop, Bloor St] for good quality pots and switches, albeit at a markup).
Radioshack is still around, but has scaled back extremely.
From thousands of operating stores to 500. Had a few in our area all close, so instead of 2-3 miles, now requires 20 miles to get to one. Effectively to some towns/cities it feels like Radioshack is no more because of such a drastic hit to their footprint.
This isn't unique to any specific region, so I would guess it has to do with density of relevant industries and individuals and the rise of e-commerce. As an example, the San Francisco Bay Area used to be full of shops like Halted, Weird Stuff, Frys (back when they were healthy, not the hollowed out shell that exists today), and Radio Shacks where you could get pretty much any component, module, or development tool that you needed as a hobbyist or small company in the hardware space. What has changed in the last decade though is you can now get access to a much broader range of parts and tools relatively quickly from Mouser, Digikey, SparkFun, Amazon, etc and an even broader set slowly from AliExpress.
There are very few places remaining where there is enough density of need in immediate parts, live debugging, or cottage industry-style production to sustain markets like the one in Shenzhen. Worse, decline in one part of the market (dev tools for examples) would result in a decline in visitors and business adjacencies that speed the decline of the other parts.
Aside from Shenzhen, I'm only aware of Akibahara (smaller and more consumer focused) and some of the markets in Seoul (one of which is smaller and consumer focused, and the other which is more machining/tooling cottage industry focused).
More likely liability and labor with those skills moving to better paying jobs.
Doing BGA rework with the right tools is pretty trivial. You can teach the average high school kid to do this stuff but it's not worth it when they could just go to college and learn circuit design or programming to create a design for a less educated technician to build. If they'd rather learn the rework, there are plenty of places that will hire them for more than what someone would pay to have their phone potentially destroyed.
I’d say this is a consequence of our outsourcing the manufacture of these products. Repairing electronics is a related skill to developing/manufacturing them. It makes sense that the economy we hire to build these products would also be best at repairing them.
I think it's a combination of factors. Vocational education has never been valued (people want college degrees), and also electronics have become cheap (and harder to fix). The country has also been slowly deindustrializing in the last decades.
I think what is happening it that it much cheaper to make something in China than to repair it locally. If you spend half the cost of a new thing to repair it, you may just buy a new thing.
Yes, but its also because just about every business in the US adhears to the "what the market will bear" rather than "quality product at a fair price" idea.
That and regulatory capture (think plumbers/ac repair/etc) mean that while the part may cost $25 retail, and it only takes 5 minutes to replace they can get away with charging $400 for it (happened to me recently) because they know its going to cost you more to replace it. Appliance repair is going the same way, as is automobile repair at a lot of dealers/name brand chains. The smaller guys will replace an alternator for $40+parts, but your going to be looking at 250+marked up parts at a lot of places. I had the dealer quote me $800 for a door lock, that I ended up fixing mysel for $2 in ebay parts and an hour in labor last year.
Its not always regulatory capture. I tried to get my TV fixed a few years back at some third party repair shop and they still wanted a minimum of $200 to maybe fix it vs me buying a new TV for $300. There is no regulatory capture for TV set repair... just the expenses for the repair shop to stay open.
This sounds like descriptions I've read of what Akihabara in Tokyo used to be like before it transformed into its current state as the anime otaku Mecca. There's still a small electronics market area there but it's hard to imagine what it once was with everything else so changed around it.
> my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage
How does this work? I’d have thought those flash chips would be something customised specifically for Apple and contain some kind of authentication system or preprogrammed ROM with immutable firmware - or at least have the IMEI number burned into it somewhere - surely there’s some mechanism for an iPhone to detect unofficial (or unofficially installed) storage chips and prevent booting?
Are they sourcing actual Apple chips that get leaked or diverted out of Apple’s presumably locked-down supply-chain?
At least for the older models, they used standard flash chips (eMMC?) --- there wouldn't have been official Apple models with that large of a capacity at the time anyway.
I don't think there is much to customise in a flash chip.
There comes a point where a part is so basic and integral to the device that putting these kind of protections is outright impossible - without them the phone might not exist as a computing device.
Any building in HQB is an example of "vertical integration". The ground floor sells the finished product, the top floor you can get all the components to make that product with all floors in between you can get some form of sub-assemblies in between the raw components and the finished product.
It will blow your mind if you have never seen something like that before.
The closest I have seen somthing similar before I visited Shenzhen was Sim Lim Square in Singapore which was just one or two buildings in total.
I bought two copies of Bunnie's book before I left and learned some basic Mandarin before my trip there. Knowing numbers will take you a long way to doing some basic price negotiations but using/reading a calculator for price communication is also fine.
I visited basically every weekend over a 5 month period in 2013. My ex-girlfriend was working in finance there, and whenever I wasn't going on dates, I'd go and visit the electronics shops.
Huaqiangbei is the largest of its kind, without a doubt. There's areas designated to each kind of component, device, or service. I didn't know that it was possible to upgrade the capacity of an iPhone (by de-soldering flash memory chips and reprogramming firmware), but there are some very talented people in Shenzhen who do just that.
Wandering around helped me to get an idea of what was available. Sitting on the metro gave me time to reflect, and type up notes on my phone about different connectors. I compared voltages, imagined adaptors, and then went and bought them or built them. Although it didn't start (or end) there, my pockets grew significantly thanks to Huaqingbei.
By comparison, when I went to Akihabara in 2012, it was a lot cleaner and tidier, but more expensive and somewhat smaller. Taipei has Guanghua, which isn't bad either, but most of the shops are just in one mall. Kaohsiung has 2 streets (Changmingjie and Jianguolu) for components and finished products, respectively.
What I found to be most useful was checking Taobao beforehand, and sending messages to sellers using Aliwangwang or WeChat. Then I could get the address, go to their store, test it, and pick it up in person.
I used offline maps and GPS coordinates to be certain about addresses, and YouLing (my own app) for instant translation. Now WeChat's translator is probably good enough.
What I'd like to know about modern Shenzhen is how the cashless society has affected sales. Does everyone use Alipay?
Could you suggest how to use Alipay or WechatPay as a foreigner without a local bank account?
Things like city bikes are great and very convenient. In Kaohsiung it used docking stations and a metro card. From what I hear, in China they are dockless, and use mobile apps (which means an expensive roaming data plan) and Chinese payments. These may be convenient for locals, but very user-unfriendly to foreigners. Locals probably have their routine figured out, whereas foreigners are probably going to visit new places, and will therefore use bicycles more.
I was able to link my foreign amex to wechatpay a year or two ago. I couldn't deposit money into it, but it let me at least open a wechatpay wallet. Then I could use red envelopes from acquaintances and give them the cash equivalent.
This may not work for more than street-food-level expenses though.
Alipay actually has expanded across the world - you can register an account with a normal EU credit card or bank account, and even pay with AliPay at many stores in Europe (even in cash-loving Germany DM is accepting it)
When I was there last year, many vendors outright refused cash. Perhaps it would have been different if I were looking actually serious about buying in quantity.
If this is something you're curious about I highly recommend the YouTube channel Strange Parts. One of their most popular videos features their host building an iPhone from parts sourced in the markets of Shenzhen.
This guy knows what he is talking about. Strange parts is a fascinating watch. The classic videos are him building an iPhone from components, and then modding it to have extra features like a headphone jack. He also has done some factory tours, and recently did a series where he went to Akihabara in Japan. Great series. I found him on YouTube after reading bunnies blog but wanting more.
If this kind of stuff interests you, I also recommend YouTubers like tronicsfix. He'll buy batches of broken electronics (20 switches in the link below) troubleshoot, and repair then. None of the stuff strange parts and tronicfix is doing is particularly difficult. I think my enjoyment of these stems from the mental shift I've experienced of not treating electronics as consumables.
Normally, if I had a switch and it stopped working out of warranty, I'd probably toss it. Now, I might break out the meter and test the video chip (or other components) and see if I could replace it. Yay for learning new things.
Shenzhen in general is a relatively boring modern city because of it's recent growth. There is certainly plenty to do, and lots of electronics in general, but I wouldn't visit specifically as a tourist. If you speak Mandarin well it's probably a bit more interesting, but then why not go to Shanghai.
The market is really something. It's organized into different buildings roughly by sub-category of electronics and level of integration. It's almost like a mall, but with small booth-style vendors and a fair number of separate buildings in a small district. A lot of the booths represent much larger companies and they only have a sample of their stock available at the market.
One building might have all low-cost consumer electronics devices. Flashlights, bluetooth speakers, etc. The larger vendors are primarily looking for a buyer to brand or resell their devices in volume, but you can buy singles as well. Many 'knock-off' products here, like a fake Beats Pill speaker.
Another building might have entirely connectors. One floor will be RF connectors, another will be standard PC connectors (PCIe, HDMI, etc).
Another building might have all LED lighting products. The first floor might be completed lighting fixtures: LED street lights, ceiling lights, replacement bulbs. The next floor might have LED modules, power supplies, strip lights, and drivers. Another floor might have individual LEDs on tape-and-reel.
Most people speak a fairly limited amount of English, so communication is a combination of pointing and pen/paper or calculator for pricing and haggling. Payment is mostly cash for westerners. Carry a reasonable stack of 100 RMB bills.
It's certainly an interesting experience. For hardware engineers or 'makers', it's certainly worth going if you're in Shenzhen or Hong Kong and have the appropriate visa. I haven't found a ton of use for actually buying things at the market because most components are not very well specified or tested. Standard RF connectors, LED products for one-off builds, or fun laser projectors are a good buy. I avoid ICs and batteries for the most part, or any unusual connectors. Passives are usually cheap enough on Digikey I prefer the reliable supply to measuring lead pitch or hoping the stated tolerance is accurate.
[edit] Someone else mentioned cash isn't as useful anymore, so maybe disregard that. I haven't been in 3 years, most of my work is near Shanghai these days.
Good point about visas! I'd like to add that when I went, I had difficulty getting a visa from the Chinese Embassy in Hong Kong. (I'd already used 30 days x2 entries, and I wasn't a Hong Kong resident).
Instead, I went to Forever Bright, a visa agent who take passports over to Shenzhen PSB. Sure enough, they got me a 90 day single entry tourist visa with no more questions asked.
It is also possible to get a visa on arrival for the Pearl River Delta area. That lets you visit for 5 days to do some shopping. (when I went I think it used to be 2 weeks).
There are areas outside Shenzhen city that are quite scenic, particularly little islands. But I agree, the city isn't for tourism unless electronics shopping is your kind of thing. I did go on dates there with my ex (message me if you want to know specific ideas), but it helped a lot that she was there to translate. The things that bothered me most when living there were the firewall (no Facebook) and going to church (I could only go to the church for foreigners that's based in an international school or the official government-run Three Self Movement, not a local house church).
Another point about visiting the surrounding area is that people speak Cantonese. Shenzhen is special because everybody moved there from all over Greater China (yes, including Taiwan - there's something special about the Special Economic Zone so many companies are run by Taiwanese businessmen). So Shenzhen speaks Mandarin, but Zhongshan speaks Cantonese.
Now for a shameless plug: if you want to try to learn Chinese, I wrote Pingtype to make the parallel Pinyin and word-by-word translation. I wrote it for and used it for daily Bible reading, which improved my vocabulary significantly. I still use it to process lyrics to sing along in church, though I'm not studying as hard now I don't live in a Chinese-speaking country.
the electronics markets are overwhelming in size and quantity. imo either try to have an idea of what you're looking for, or be prepared to spend a few days to absorb it all. don't get me wrong, that's my idea of fun, but it might not be for your companions.
i did find it hard to get used to the vendors. the shops are very small and you will be aggressively approached by the staff, which I found irritating. do also be prepared to haggle.
shenzhen itself is not that interesting otherwise. Because it is so new and because it is a city of transplants, you can tell there is not much unique culture. There are plenty of more fascinating places to explore in the PRD though; Guangzhou is a treasure
This is similar to my experience a few years ago. Wasn't as fun as I expected it to be due to (1) language barrier (I do understand kindergarten-level Mandarin, but technology is another world) (2) it's overwhelming on multiple levels and (3) as an obvious foreigner many of the vendors aggressively latched onto me as a bulk purchaser for overseas business, which led to nothing but frustration on both sides.
Shenzhen itself kinda feels like Blade Runner at night. I dig it in small doses. And I haven't been anywhere in China where people have as much patience for horrible laowai Mandarin skills so it's probably a good place to learn the language.
Guangzhou is lovely though. Hope I can make it back there someday.
I find Shenzhen fascinating because it IS a city of transplants and migrants - there's even a saying that sums it up quite nicely, roughly translated: If you live in Shenzhen, you're from Shenzhen. Another I saw on the side of a building was "One drink for home, another for Shenzhen"
One thing everyone seems to fail to mention when talking about Shenzhen is that you can do incredible food tours of all of China just by walking down the street - the place is jammed full of reasonably authentic regional food places.
I do generally agree that it's probably a bit dull for 'tourist' activities, but it ranks highly in my 'cities to generally hang about in' list!
I've been in an out of the city on work assignments for the last 12 years.
Markets were great up until 10 years ago, not so much now. The HQB was like 6-7 times bigger its current size in city blocks, and there were still functioning factories there.
People who come to Shenzhen today, and see HQB for the first time still loose strength in their legs from the scale.
My impression from life in the city... Hard to describe. The city's last 15 years were bizarre, speaking lightly.
It's eclectic to the extreme.
The city simple doesn't feel like China at all, nor like anything else in the world. Even Hongkong feels to be more like a Chinese city than Shenzhen to me. I think the only comparison I can come up with will be... Dubai. People come with different epithets for it, I think the most original one I heard was it being an "alien colony."
Without any doubt, it's one of the best cities to live in Asia, and it beast Shanghai and Beijing hands down on quality of life now. But just 10 years ago people were calling it a hellhole.
Back in 2009, I went to an observation deck on the SEG tower. I saw factories and dorms from horizon to horizon. Now the architecture feels indeed much more like Dubai, with half of the city area being rebuilt since then.
We have extremely good, world class urban planning. Shenzhen is one of a very few cities in China with own independent urban planning office. Those guys, city planners, indeed have genuine authority on that, and they did overrule local party officials and the mayor's office a number of times in the past.
Infrastructure is great. Despite of population of around 20 million, you don't feel it in daily life at all. The traffic is very light for the city of this size. The metro works great, except for rare pileups.
The city spent more money on hosting the 2011 Universiade than most counties spend on entire Olympics. Yet, it went completely unnoticed outside of China. Even inside of China itself it was barely noted.
Everybody credit the city for being a manufacturing supergiant now, yet few people know that the manufacturing has been in great decline through the decade. Today's Shenzhen manufacturing output is like 1/3 of what it was during its peak in 2010.
In my entire life, I only met 5 Shenzhen natives. Though there are a lot of people who were there for 20+ years.
The city, and especially Baoan had terrible crime statistics in the past, but now it is one of the safest one in China. The peace however only came at the price of putting a policeman every 100 metres.
The city had next no no nightlife just a year ago, and it is common for all kinds of entertainment establishments to close very early. Even designated "night market" areas work at most until 20:00 at weekends. This is probably a legacy from times when street crime was rife, second to it being a "working man's city"
The demographics of the city is equally eclectic. You meet of people from all over the region, yet by Chinese standards locals are not counted as "high end." Lots of people who came here as labourers, with just vocational school diploma in the pocket.
There are very few people here who can speak English, much less than in Shanghai or Beijing. The city is still very international, but with most of foreigners being out of the Sinosphere. There some illegal migrants who spill over here from Guangzhou.
10 years ago, nearly all foreigners in the city were either engineers from less well off places in Eastern Europe, or people in the sourcing business from the West. Now, there is kinds of a demographic reversal. Lots of weird drifters from the West, and more permanent migrants from the East.
I can relate to how you're feeling about Shenzhen. I live in Hong Kong, and often visit Shenzhen. I personally feel that HK is more of a Chinese city than Shenzhen. Especially Futian is hyper modern with new buildings everywhere, it's generally clean and there are a lot of high-end restaurants and bars.
If you venture more outwards, you still get that Chinese city feeling, but the business district doesn't feel like that at all.
I first visited 10 years ago, right after the Universiade, lots of people told me they cleaned up the city, just for that event. And ever since then, every time I return, there are new buildings.
I know quite a few locals from Shenzhen, but most of my friends come from all over China, and it's great that they all hang out together.
In terms of nightlife, even 10 years ago there was plenty, although it was much more local. Now it has turned more towards high-end clubs and bars.
> yet few people know that the manufacturing has been in great decline through the decade. Today's Shenzhen manufacturing output is like 1/3 of what it was during its peak in 2010.
What happened to the manufacturing? I imagine that worldwide demand has increased in the last ten years. Where did it move to?
First, it's being priced out of the city, and going somewhere else. Land lease prices, and factory rents here are going past surreal.
Second, the global demand for electronics and light industry goods has, paradoxically, not increased much, and even went down for some product categories. I can say that with some surety as I have access to serious market research and statistics papers for which my employer pays up to $10k a pop.
The emerging markets have slided a lot, and developed markets never really recovered since 2008.
Local industry relied greatly on "Shanzhai" goods that were selling by tonnes to places like Africa, Middle East, and the rest of South and South East Asia.
There is now very little space left for such middle of the market goods in these markets. Consumer choice has now gotten much more polarised towards high and low end segments. On the low end, vertically integrated supergiants steamroll any competition, and on the high end, Western companies still have an overwhelming edge over Chinese domestic companies with their terrible marketing.
I think a lot of it is still nearby, in the Pearl River Delta. My friend's aunt took me to a PCB factory in Zhongshan (message me if you want the whole story). Everywhere from Dongmen to Guangzhou to Zhongshan to Zhuhai to Macau is developed, and there's factories with people from all over China working there.
> The city had next no no nightlife just a year ago, and it is common for all kinds of entertainment establishments to close very early.
Wow, that is not a true statement at all! Lived in Shenzhen 2009-2010 and have been back a lot since. There was always stuff open super late. Maybe you are talking about western oriented stuff?
Here is a link to a video tour of Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen, which I posted about six years ago on YouTube. It hasn’t changed much. https://youtu.be/C9YJBwD0geA
Actual hardware R&D focused business owner in the PRD here. 18 years China. IMHO the 'essential guide' is just buy stuff online: barely anyone actually physically visits stores anymore. Certain parties make money and cred by claiming being in physical proximity to a bunch of cables and parts in HQB is somehow awesome, and in a minority of cases walking around might save half a day, but really you can just order ahead or use your own stock if you have a clue which area you'll be working in, and you'll have saved 10x half a day in rent by not being there. Even if you buy stuff online many stores will give you their business card, WeChat or QQ account and you can just ask them to send stuff pronto on subsequent orders, cutting Taobao or whatever online platform out of the equation. Shenzhen is very expensive for real estate and salaries. If you want to go scrappy, live somewhere cheap in China (Yunnan is awesome) and use Taobao. If you want to go scrappy and fast, live somewhere cheap in the PRD and use Taobao. (There are minor electronics ecosystems around Xi'an, Chengdu, Zhejiang and Beijing, too.) No need to even visit Shenzhen, although outer Shenzhen / Dongguan is still a great place to acquire lots of types of industrial equipment, IMHO inner Shenzhen / HQB really just isn't anymore. Hardware startups should go somewhere cheap to iterate. The cheapest and cleanest well connected major area of the PRD is Zhuhai, where we moved from Shenzhen 1.5 years ago. I go back about once a month for outlying factories.
Is there any way to visit Shenzhen without submitting your fingerprints to the Chinese government? I've heard that everyone gets their fingers scanned at entry these days even if you never had to submit fingerprints with your visa application. Is that correct?
Last time I went there (July 2019, Shanghai), I had to submit myself to a fingerprint scan. As I recalled I have done the fingerprint scan previously. But this time, for some reason, the machine did not work or had an error, and the immigration officer saw it. She fiddled with my hand and checked the machine, was confused, then allowed me to passport check anyway.
I don't think you can refuse a fingerprint check. But if one can somehow make their fingerprints unreadable, through one way or another, you probably could bypass it.
One of my coworker is notoriously hard to fingerprint scan. Her fingerprints are allegedly busted up due to all the hand washing she'd done in her previous line of work. So maybe it can be bypassed somehow.
Don't forget you are now expected to hand over twitter, Facebook and other social media handles before travelling to the US as well, and that's as a UK/EU passport holder...
Seriously? Do they just ask for it or is there a section on a customs form or something? What if you just leave it blank and/or don’t use social media?
There's a section on it in the online visa application form. They make clear that if you omit items (eg you share you facebook page but not your twitter) and they find out then that may be grounds to deny your visa application.
The entire form starts with copy that goes something like "by filling out this form you waive any right to privacy". It's extremely aggressive. The US hates foreigners.
(source: my first and only trip to the US some 3 years ago)
It is part of "random" checks. There have been cases of people being denied entry for unlocking burner phones or social media, and -allegedly- people have been denied, because the TSA didn't believe them they weren't using social media.
Furthermore, it isn't only illegal things thst could get you singled out. If I remember correctly, a simple facebook post accusing the US to be war criminals and the greatest threat to peace was used to deny someone entry.
(On mobile atm. will update with sources in 4 hours)
I had to do a fingerprint scan and photo for the visa application, then another fingerprint and face scan when passing through the airport security.
Is there a problem with the fingerprinting requirement? I imagine the face scan can be used in much more dystopian ways, as your face is probably* being tracked by the ubiquitous security cameras in every public place you go.
Except for US citizens and Canadians. Interestingly, Canada is the only country exempt from the US fingerprinting requirement, at least for tourism or business entry.
I would assume because they consider Canadians generally lower risk, have good relations with Canadian authorities, and really don't want to slow down the line at border crossings.
I'm not sure about transit but when I (EU citizen) have been to the US they took all ten of my fingerprints, and this has also been the experience of my friends.
(Incidentally, my own government doesn't even have any of my fingerprints...)
Your handle suggests you're Dutch: every Dutch passport issued in the last decade (and hence, I think almost every current valid Dutch passport?) has your fingerprints. In fact, the Netherlands is the only EU country so far (I think) that's storing them all together centrally, not just in the passport.
That article is from 2009. I believe a few years later fingerprinting was scrapped again due to public backlash. Now they're implementing it again due to EU regulations.
I wouldn't be so certain that your government does not have your fingerprint... if it's European you can bet that at least your secret services have it as part of "we spy on your citizens, you on ours" agreement.
Of course they do - at least in Germany. Your biometrics are part of your personal ID and passport. It is only thumb and index finger though plus facial scan / photo.
Incidentally, when EU countries introduced biometric passports in mid 2000s, USA was one of the first countries to actually require the fingerprints and not accept older but otherwise valid documents.
There isn't the concept of international transit in the US. You have to "fully" enter the country as there aren't separate international terminals with passport checking and whatnot.
There's a short stay transit visa if you are just using the US as a connection point, though.
In the introduction, they lightly recommend VPNs. I would recommend using a SOCKS5 proxy instead if you're in China and looking to get past the firewall. Shadowsocks is purpose built for this [1]. You can easily set it up on a droplet or vultr before you travel. If it gets blocked, changing the port number can usually suffice.
Actually , shadowsocks can be easily detected and got blocked nowadays , try to use V2Ray instead .
Here is the website : https://www.v2ray.com/en/index.html
You can also just use a phone plan with roaming, as they aren't affected by the firewall. The guide says it's pricey, but Google Fi doesn't charge extra for roaming. I got around China last year with it, including some fairly remote parts.
Or stop by Hong Kong first and get your SIM there (from a mainland ISP.) Because it's a mainland ISP, you'll have coverage anywhere in China without roaming; and since the SIM was issued for Hong Kong, it won't route through the Great Firewall, even when in the mainland.
FWIW, I went to China last week, and sadly found out that Google Fi doesn't (yet?) support tethering while roaming on iOS. It's an annoying restriction; I worked around it with a local SOCKS5 proxy running on my iPhone, but I would have preferred not to have to hack around it at all.
To be fair, having an iPhone and Fi automatically makes me a bit of a second-class citizen with Fi, but hey, it's the cheapest way for me to have international roaming.
Shadow socks is being detected today unfortunately but it takes a few days. There are many tricks that could be used to fool DPI, but not many options out there unfortunately. Good project idea for sure.
There's a game on steam called SHENZHEN I/O. I think that if you finish that game and study this document, you can implement anything you want really :)
> (...) And then there are the pronunciation subtleties, such as 芯片号, “xīn piàn hào” (which means an “IC’s part number” (literally “core flat item’s number”), which with misplaced accents sounds like 性偏好, “xìng piān hào” which means “sexual preference”. No native speaker would ever mispronounce or confuse the two, but a foreigner going up to a local asking “What’s your chip’s part number?” could be heard as “What’s your sexual preference?” if mispronounced and taken out of context.
I love how every language out there is choke-full of these :) Though so far nothing beats the importance of punctuation in "Come on, people"[1]
Choke-full sounds appropriate in this case (since it's about people choking on their words, more or less), but the usual phrase is chock-full, meaning "packed full".
Oh, this is wonderful! I'm learning Chinese right now - conversationally capable, but I have no grasp on jargon (especially electronics). This is a great guide.
There are some issues with the pinyin transliterations - they seem to be machine-generated rather than human-generated: there's some errors, like mixups between chang/zhang for 长, and weirdness like "yao yao ling" for 110 where we'd usually use "yi bai yi shi". But technically these wouldn't matter much in a point-and-translate context because neither party would be paying attention to the pinyin.
Anyway, aside from that nit - I suspect I will be using part of it as a study guide for my Mandarin learning. Thanks, Bunnie!
Ah, I’m sorry. I should have clarified further - I was referring to the transliteration of “110V” as “yao yao ling dian ya” - “one one zero volts”. In that instance the transliteration is incorrect as one would usually use “one hundred and ten” (yi bai yi shi).
In Chicago, there are many many very talented Chinese engineering students. Having two hard copies of this guide in the office has helped me recover from some miscommunications very quickly.
I'm currently reading "The Hardware Hacker" [1] by the same author. It touches on a lot of the same issues at a higher level. Highly recommended even for those just casually interested in the topic.
I was looking for exactly this book in german book stores, but local bookstores here do not have books from No Starch Press in their program:
https://nostarch.com/shenzhen
I never buy anything from amazon, just my personal decision
It agressively pushes all the other products Baidu has, like every other Chinese big app, but Baidu's reputation is especially bad, think about it as Baidu's Wechat super app. You can try Tencent Map.
If you are using Android, then get ready being asked for all kinds of permissions as it's Chinese apps' tradition, some apps even outright refuse to run if you decline it.
"As a general rule, the Internet as you know it is blocked
in China. There’s no access to Google services, Facebook,
Twitter, Imgur, YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox, Telegram, etc. etc.
As a consolation, there’s Bing. Roaming data service will
bypass the firewall since roaming phones are assigned an IP
address from the home country of the subscriber’s carrier,
but it’s an expensive option. Prices vary depending upon
the carrier, but currently T-mobile offers one of the lowest
cost international roaming data plans. A VPN is a cheaper
way to get around the firewall, but depending upon the
political climate even VPNs can be blocked. China’s firewall
routers have the ability to do deep packet inspection and
thus can automatically discover VPN connections running
on unconventional ports or with other small modifications
intended to bypass less sophisticated firewalls."
Anybody got a Chinese to English dictionary where more frequent meaning comes first? Cdict has this problem that lots of times some random obscure meanings are mentioned before popular meanings.
(For example ，下去- go down is an irrelevant meaning and the first relevant meaning- continue is 3rd in the list)
I'm deeply unsettled by the economic relationship between China and the rest of the world, particularly with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear nations have tried at all costs to avoid arms races and armed conflict. However, war still happens, but on more subtle fronts.
China is waging economic warfare in earnest:
- Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese investors, driving up real estate and turning a significant segment of the US population from homeowners to renters.
- Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades, to the point that Western nations have lost the ability to manufacture many products.
- Devaluing the Yuan and opening trade agreements around the world to protect itself from US sanctions and tariffs
- Purchasing billions annually in US treasury bonds (they hold around 30% of outstanding treasury bonds - over $1.1T)
At the same time, China's might is costing its 1.4B citizens dearly: unsafe or abusive working conditions, severe human rights abuses, and an Orwellian surveillance state.
I know the choice to do business with China is complex and nuanced. But I suggest prioritizing the moral implications--both to the world and to China's citizens--of a Chinese government with ever-increasing power when considering to what extent one should do business with China.
If every Chinese topic turns into the same "China vs. the rest of the world" discussion—or to put it more generally, if every thread gets sucked into whatever generic black hole happens to be nearby—then it becomes impossible to discuss anything specific on HN. Specifics are where the intellectually interesting material lies.
Compare the topic of the OP—electronics markets in Shenzhen—to what we see in this subthread: "China is waging economic warfare", "They aren't all evil", "Some are very evil", "HN is full of anti-Chinese comments and this will only continue as the war with Eastasia is in progress", etc. The generic discussions are always the same, and usually turn nasty, perhaps because the mind craves extra action or amusement to compensate for it all being so repetitive.
My apologies, dang - I'm very sorry. I have a lot of respect for you and I'd sad to have caused offense.
I had no idea this was a flamewar topic... guess I haven't read enough of other people's comments on the issue. A lot of what people responded with is new information to me.
Is there an index of topics that tend towards flamewars that I could check periodically?
No offense at all, and I realize this happens with zero intent. It's a tragedy-of-the-commons thing. No one creates the flamewar, and still a subthread like this ends up gathering mass at the top of the page on a regular basis, clogging out the curious conversation.
That would catapult you to the top 0.5% of HN users. I'm not sure this distinction is really getting through, though it seems obvious to me after staring at these things so much.
> If every Chinese topic turns into the same "China vs. the rest of the world" discussion—or to put it more generally, if every thread gets sucked into whatever generic black hole happens to be nearby—then it becomes impossible to discuss anything specific on HN.
The trouble is that issue is that earnest discussion of these serious issues has been suppressed for more than a year, and that by now, talking about this "cute" stuff while pretending said suppression is going leaves a certain aftertaste. I guess in your mind, ignoring an elephant on the couch is just the thing a curious intelligent person acting in good faith would do. But that's just you.
> The generic discussions are always the same
That's just as true for many articles about social media, node, golang, whatever. It can be demonstrated in 5 minutes that what you criticize consistently in one context, isn't even worth a mention in many, many others.
It has probably been the most-discussed topic on HN in the last year, so you're not going to get very far calling it "suppressed".
The basic problem is that such discussions are repetitive, this is a site for curiosity, and curiosity doesn't go with repetition.
For sure the problem of generic discussion is similar across all the hot topics. But some are more prone to flamewar, and those require more moderation.
>Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese investors, driving up real estate and turning a significant segment of the US population from homeowners to renters.
Recent strict capital controls out of China have resulted in a substantial negative shock to housing, especially in places like Vancouver. It's also private investors and not an explicit government policy
>Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades, to the point that Western nations have lost the ability to manufacture many products.
It's called comparative advantage and absolute advantage and it's been observed for centuries.
>Devaluing the Yuan and opening trade agreements around the world to protect itself from US sanctions and tariffs
a lot of countries do this, open market operations by the central bank is not a new occurrence.
>Purchasing billions annually in US treasury bonds (they hold around 30% of outstanding treasury bonds - over $1.1T)
It's a good investment, and any threat of sell-off is mutually assured destruction
China is abusive to its own citizens, that's not up for dispute. But what is rather troublesome is the double standard that the west subjects the rest of the world too.
> Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese investors
Source please. From what I read Wang Jianlin got into serious political trouble for taking foreign currency out of China to buy foreign real estate.
> Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades
Do you mind elaborating why this is "waging economic warfare"? I'm not an Economist but this sounds like China is merely trying to be competent?
> Devaluing the Yuan
This might be valid.
> opening trade agreements around the world to protect itself from US sanctions and tariffs
Again why is this "waging economic warfare"? Sounds like fair game to me.
> Purchasing billions annually in US treasury bonds
One of the reasons on China's purchase of US bonds was to get a relatively low-risk investment for all the USD China gets from trade surplus. From [0]: With trillions of U.S. dollars, China has found the U.S .Treasury securities to offer the safest investment destination for Chinese forex reserves.
One side note: worker protection and condition has seen great improvement since China joined WTO but it's still not on par with developed economies (obviously).
I wouldn't give any ground on devaluing the Yuan; that just means that the Chinese are more willing to trade real goods for paper. It is the government giving people's stuff away for free, but to foreigners.
The implication is that China will use that to build up internal expertise and atrophy foreign expertise; but that threat can be seen a generation away and given the subsidies the US pours into its own military it is hardly on China if it causes a problem.
Most of the West's economic problems are self inflicted and while the idea of China's erratic government eventually building the world's strongest military is terrifying they haven't done that yet. The West wants an unreasonably high standard of living without working for it and China is just nodding, smiling and getting things done.
I upvote and unflag you just to have an opportunity to disapprove what you said. What you said is very tendentious.
> - Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese investors, driving up real estate and turning a significant segment of the US population from homeowners to renters.
Western nations do subsidize the real estate industry a great lot, but China is not a party to be blamed for that. Foreign buyers across all Western nations barely approach 10% even in the most hot markets.
Prime benefactors of such subsidies are rich, well connected upper classes from the West who live rentier lifestyles. Coincidentally, those make a big part of the political establishment there.
> - Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades, to the point that Western nations have lost the ability to manufacture many products.
Why Western nations didn't follow the suite and did not slash prices on their own?
Western business culture chases profitability, Chinese chases volume. Though, it is unfortunately starting to change. The ideological virus of "MBA/lawyer/banker culture" has now reached China too...
> - Devaluing the Yuan and opening trade agreements around the world to protect itself from US sanctions and tariffs
China only managed to keep devalue its Yuan so far only thanks to patently endless supply of US treasury bills at attractive rates, which China's central bank uses to counterweight its own FX trades.
If US want Yuan to shoot up to the sky, it only has to stop the crazy government spending. In fact, China has more and more often to keep Yuan from falling too much than from overappreciating in the last few years.
China is now having a problem with its own bonds getting too attractive to foreign buyers too as of late.
> At the same time, China's might is costing its citizens dearly: unsafe or abusive working conditions, severe human rights abuses, and an Orwellian surveillance state
Well, yes... Yet China is one of the best markets around. It's a very bitter candy to swallow.
> Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese investors, driving up real estate and turning a significant segment of the US population from homeowners to renters.
where did you get this idea from? Pls provide evidence and support?
> Purchasing billions annually in US treasury bonds
It's interesting how you consider financing the US national debt to be "economic warfare." Would you rather China not lend the US money?
> At the same time, China's might is costing its 1.4B citizens dearly: unsafe or abusive working conditions, severe human rights abuses, and an Orwellian surveillance state.
The point you're missing is the dramatic improvement in living conditions in China over the past 30 years. Working conditions are far better than they were 30 years ago, and the average income is many times higher. Most Chinese people used to live without all sorts of things you take for granted, like showers and telephones in their homes. They used to have to heat their homes with dirty coal stoves. Electricity used to run only a few hours a day. Almost nobody had any money to travel abroad or buy a car. All that has changed in one generation. Recognizing that will help you understand why most Chinese people think so differently about the state of their country than you do. They have lots of complaints, but they also know how much things have changed for the better in so many ways.
> Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades, to the point that Western nations have lost the ability to manufacture many products.
Western countries have moved to products that have higher value added. China is largely industrial society, the developed world is post-industrial society.
> Devaluing the Yuan and opening trade agreements around the world to protect itself from US sanctions and tariffs
Indeed, the Renminbi has actually been overvalued for a few years now. China has been selling US Dollars and buying Renminbi in order to prop up the value of their currency. This actually hurts Chinese exporters, all else being equal, but allowing the RMB to fall would encourage capital flight.
>I know the choice to do business with China is complex and nuanced. But I suggest prioritizing the moral implications--both to the world and to China's citizens--of a Chinese government with ever-increasing power when considering to what extent one should do business with China.
There is a book by Stephen Roach "Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China" that take a good stab of explains this issue.
This comment breaks the site guidelines. Please review them and note the one against insinuating astroturfing/shillage/brigading etc. without evidence.
The "agenda", and "who is behind these", are overwhelmingly just internet users pontificating as internet users always pontificate. There's no need to sacrifice Occam for cloak-and-dagger sinistry, and bringing it into the threads nearly always has an extremely degrading effect.
if china were astroturfing rhetoric on here it would probably be close to the exact opposite of the sentiment expressed by op. the current arrangement is quite favorable for them.
I'm a US citizen working at a tech company. I have a normal HN account with reputation above 2000. These are my own thoughts and opinions. I'm just honestly afraid of being targeted by Chinese hackers for posting sentiments like the above.
It is like to post something negative about LGBT and claim that you fear being attacked by their active members. China and Chinese don't give a XYZT about you. HN is full of anti-Chinese comments and this will only continue as the war with Eastasia is in progress.
. . . or as long as Chinese leadership continues to engage in human rights abuses, or as long as Chinese companies continue with rampant theft of intellectual property, manufacturing of unsafe/unethical products, etc.
Not all criticism is a sign of national- or racially-targeted abuse. No one is above criticism.
I beg to differ. The worst that those who post anti-LGBT sentiments have to fear is getting flagged, lambasted in the comments, and perhaps an account suspension.
But government-funded hackers (Chinese or otherwise) are capable of causing all sorts of havoc to my life. I try not to underestimate the operational threat they pose.
>> The worst that those who post anti-LGBT sentiments have to fear is getting flagged, lambasted in the comments, and perhaps an account suspension.
No, it can be reported via social media that you from the company X spread some aggression against LGBT (this is a hypothetical example). People get fired for much less when twitter is in action.
Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind stealing the design and doing it themselves.