Shenzhen Everywhere

January 8, 2019 by An Xiao Mina

Excerpted from the MIT Technology Review’s Inside Shenzhen’s race to outdo Silicon Valley by An Xiao Mina and Jan Chipchase:

In much the same way that open-source software enables a global community of developers to copy and remix each other’s work, rapidly creating variants on a piece of software to meet different needs, the shanzhai method delivered “hardware…

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Starting Up in Shenzhen

Photo Essay: Fidget Spinners, AR Guns and Panda Cams in Shenzhen

September 5, 2017 by An Xiao Mina

Editor’s note: Below is a select excerpt of An Xiao Mina’s Instagram posts from her recent trip to China.

Shenzhen, world epicenter of fidget spinners

At the world epicenter of fidget spinners. I see them in my head, spinning spinning spinning in Berlin, New York, Manila, suddenly viral, suddenly memetic.

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China Meme Report

Anti-shanzhai memes, copycat gamemakers and Korean popstars

July 28, 2014 by Jason Li

Left: Puzzle & Dragons. Right: Tower of Saviors. Image sources: AppAdvice, USGamer. — **Left:** *Puzzle & Dragons*, made in Japan in 2012. **Right:** *Tower of Saviors*, made in Hong Kong in 2013. (Image sources: AppAdvice, USGamer .)

This month, South Korean boy band sensation Big Bang arrives in Hong Kong as the newly-minted spokesperson…

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Starting Up in Shenzhen

Shanzhai Meets Open Source

June 11, 2014 by Jason Li

From Hacked Matter’s feature in the Atlantic:

Take, World Peace Industrial (WPI), a Taiwanese electronic sourcing company located in Shenzhen, as an example. The company’s application technology unit (ATU) spends millions annually to develop reference circuit boards, called gongban 公板 (“public board”). A gongban can be used by a variety of different companies, who either incorporate it in…

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Starting Up in Shenzhen

Highlights from the cutting edge of Chinese consumer electronics

October 2, 2011 by Jason Li

My picks from the Segbuy (赛格网), an online electronics marketplace with zero shipping fees and a seven-day buy-back guarantee. The online “trading platform” is run by the same company who own one of the famously large electronics malls in Shenzhen (the SEG Building 赛格广场).

Click on the images to go to the product page with more information.

At…

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