China in its hand? Tencent's Global Digital Ecosystem Summit reaches out to 'internationalize'

For centuries, Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province, China, was a fishing village and port on the Pearl River Estuary. It became a city as recently as 1980, when its population was just 30,000 people: less than that of a small commuter town. But today, it is the third largest city in China: a vast, sprawling, high-tech metropolis linking Hong Kong to the mainland. Incredibly, it is now home to over 17 million people – many of whom are young, ambitious, and attracted to work in the industry that drives it: new technology.

As its hundreds of new-build skyscrapers attest, much of the city has sprung up this century alongside China's burgeoning tech sector. Shenzhen is home to, among countless others, electronics and telecoms giant, Huawei – target of the first skirmishes in the US trade war; robotics innovator UBTECH, whose devices stretch from educational toys to industrial machines, via the booming ...