Foreign Entrepreneurs Take Tech Pilgrimages to China
Sunday, 2026/09/06220 words3 minutes524 reads
Foreign entrepreneurs, investors and executives are paying for visits to China’s tech centres. Their itinerary includes humanoid-robot makers, AI companies, electric-vehicle plants and electronics supply chains. Reuters calls this a “tech pilgrimage”: a journey to study how products are designed, built and deployed at scale.
These tours are growing. Shanghai researcher Robert Wu organised two programmes for over two dozen visitors, charging up to US$15,000 for five days. GloPen, a Shanghai tour agency, said inquiries from mostly European and Singaporean clients rose 50% in 2026 and it now runs over 100 one-day company tours monthly. China’s industrial-tourism sector earned US$17.8 billion last year, state media said.
Shenzhen shows the shift. Foreign visitors rose 70% last year; entries passed five million by August. The city’s electronics markets, factories and supplier network allow hardware founders to find batteries, displays and prototype makers quickly. Some local companies are establishing “hacker houses” for overseas robotics and AI entrepreneurs.
The story is not that China has already won every technology race. One researcher noted that China’s robotaxi sector can lag the United States because of domestic caution about job losses. Others say non-Chinese firms still hold global market share, advanced intellectual property and profits. They matter because founders want evidence of whether China is a competitor, partner or supplier — not an assumption from headlines.
