Travel China: Shenzhen – The Manufacturing Hub of the 21st Century

Travel China: Shenzhen – The Manufacturing Hub of the 21st Century

Do you know that your electronic existence and that of everyone else rests on my eBay sellers’ shipping labels which I threw into the trash bins without a second glance?

I had an eBay account which I hardly used until I moved to the Czech Republic (CZ). Having only 10 million people, a relatively small market, businesses in CZ can’t be that competitive. Prices here were much higher compared to what I used to pay in the USA and richer Western European countries like UK or Germany that hs a bigger population and more developed economy.

For big ticket items like digital cameras and laptops, I bought from the US and asked traveling friends to bring them over, or I would meet them somewhere in Europe to pick up. Smaller ticket items like photography gadgets, electronic accessories, and travel equipment were harder to arrange because I needed it more often, and they were cheap only during sale clearances in bespoke countries, something rarely happened in CZ. Hence, I switched to online shopping and eBay. Everything I would have paid $10, $20 or $50 in retail shops or online stores in CZ, I could easily find an alternative on eBay for as little as $1 to half the price.

Most of what I bought were shipped out from Shenzhen, an obscure city for many people, in the South Eastern coast of mainland China.  But this isn’t the end of it. Shenzhen doesn’t just produce low-end, cheap electronic gadgets and auctions them off on eBay. What I bought on eBay were Chinese clones of more expensive, sometimes identical versions wrapped in big-name logos.

How big?
Acer, Amazon, Apple, Asus, Barnes & Noble, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Logitech.

Should I go on?
Microsoft, Motorola, Netgear, Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, etc.

Ring any bell?

This means that every electronic item that you ever owned, currently own and will own: cute little iPods; beloved iPhone 0, 1, 2, 3, X; tablet-tablet, iPad 1, 2, mini, biggy; Samsung Galaxy, Universe; ebook-readers e-ink, back-lit, front-lit, paperwhite, paperblack; laptops, netbooks; desktops; printers; mobile phones; gaming devices; television; networking gears; the chips used on these devices, etc.
The list of items is as endless as the list of clients of Shenzhen-based Foxconn, the largest electronic maker in the world.

Look around your house and gather whatever electronic, electronic-related and put them in a heap. Remove more or less half of it. Then repeat with the millions of households in your country. Then add them to the millions in all countries of your continent, be it Asia, Europe, America, Africa or Australia. Sum them up, and you get the total amount manufactured in a single company, Foxconn; in a single city, Shenzhen; in a single country, China.

And I have only brought up electronic.

The Golden Baby of China

I didn’t have a lot of time in Shenzhen because I was bewitched in Hangzhou [Link]. I arrived in Shenzhen the night before my last day in China. Originally I wanted my last stop to be in Guangzhou, China’s food capital being such a food addict as I was. But after carefully examining my inner struggle between ‘Do I eat or Do I shop?’, ‘Do I want it cheap or Do I want my meat?’ I decided I had eaten enough in the last month and had a whole life ahead of me dedicating to do just that. It wasn’t like stinky tofu would be stinker, Beijing duck more Beijing, fried rice more grease, meatballs more meat, noodle soups more MSG in Guangzhou. I skipped Guangzhou to be in the city which had been impacting our entire world.

How so?
If I take away your iPhones now, will you scream? Do you shed tears if one day iPad won’t be here? Do your hearts break if you can’t crack the angry birds’ heads?

Yes. It will be the greatest tragedy post-Shakespeare.

My first impression of the city was its almost clean train station, very usual sight for China where people like to spit and spit and sometimes let their babies do their deed. I didn’t see rows and rows of passengers sitting and lying in and out of the station next to their mountain of bags waiting for their train departure, a common scenery I saw in every other train stations before.

Well, it is better to be clean given a lot of foreign investments pouring in. As a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) city, Shenzhen operates under a more free-market model with trade incentives to encourage setup of factories and businesses and attract local and foreign investments. Out of thousands, SEZ sprinkled in over 100 developing countries; China has been the most successful with its wonder-kind Shenzhen. This former fishing village, in only 25 years, grew its population by 30 times to 15 million, one of the fast growing cities in the world. In fact, it grew so fast that it became the fifth densest city after Bombay, Calcutta, Lagos and Karachi. Shenzhen is the most crowded and richest town in China, having its own Stock Exchange besides Shanghai. Shenzhen is not a household name we whisper on our lips when we talk about China, and it doesn’t need to be. We have already worn it, touch it, slept with it, kissed it or called our first love with it.

I had only one day in Shenzhen and couldn’t check out all shopping districts which somehow was a good thing. Otherwise, I would have a major material meltdown finding my way among heap and heap of clothes, bags, iPhone accessories, watches, jewelry, scarves, souvenirs and lots of other products.

If you never shop in Shenzhen, you won’t miss out on anything since you already saw and will see the same things wherever you are, and chances are you own at least one item made in Shenzhen.
Photo credit: www.redflag.info