Best Chinese Cities For Tech Entrepreneurs

[Ronald Adjei]

Hello, I am moving to China in 2020 and I was wondering;

What are the most favorable cities in China for people who run online businesses? Thank you.

 

[zhouhaochen]

The Zhongguancun area in Beijing with all the big universities around is probably the biggest tech and start up community in China. However Shenzhen, Shanghai and Hangzhou all also have very big start up communities.

Be aware though that all of these are in Chinese only, so you need to be able to speak Mandarin to really benefit from that. If you are looking for an English tech community, Shanghai is probably your best bet because a lot more people speak English, but in the end it is the same, without Mandarin most doors will remain closed, though it of course depends on what kind of business you want to run.

In my experience Chinese Tech people tend to be good and many things, but learning a difficult foreign language like English is not necessarily one of them. Often the people who are good at English are not as much into technology (though of course that is a very general statement and each person is different, which especially matters when there are 1.4 billion of them).

[wschlender]

We have a little community of people running online businesses in Kaohsiung (Taiwan). There are probably more lively places but it's relaxing and fun here.

[vellocet]

"Online business" does not mean "tech startup".  It means selling stuff online.  I assume it would be a Taobao or Tmall store of some kind.  It wouldn't really matter where you were, but being near a good logistics hub would be important.  All of my packages from points west go through Wuhan, so that's a good place to start.  East coast would mean Shanghai or Hangzhou.  

[Tan]

It may not be on the mainland, but I've heard good things about Taipei.

它不能在大陆上，但我听说台北很好。

[StChris]

On 1/14/2020 at 3:33 PM, wschlender said:

We have a little community of people running online businesses in Kaohsiung (Taiwan). There are probably more lively places but it's relaxing and fun here.

 

Kaohsiung is a really nice place, I could imagine living there myself. Does it have a large native tech scene, or is it just a few foreigners doing online business?

[wschlender]

There are a lot of video game companies here. Lots of VR. As you would expect there's a bunch of super-talented hardware guys too.

 

The government provides cheap co-working spaces and there are tech parks around here. It's definitely nothing like Taipei but there's some stuff....

 

Also the occasional conference and meetup happens.