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This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

For decades, the pilgrimage route for ambitious tech founders, investors, and engineers led to Silicon Valley. Now, a growing number of them are flying to Shanghai, Hangzhou, or Shenzhen instead.

China is seeing a surge in a new kind of tech tourism where visitors pay up to $9,000 for curated tours of electric-vehicle factories, robotaxis, and artificial intelligence and robotics companies.

The trend is partially triggered by viral videos of China’s dancing humanoid robots and flying cars, creating a sense that the country may be moving faster than the West in key emerging technologies. As China-US tech competition intensifies, these trips are also becoming a means to explore the next investment opportunity and tech breakthrough.

“There’s a fear-of-missing-out dynamic at play: the sense that China’s tech ecosystem has reached a level of sophistication where not seeing it firsthand puts you at an informational disadvantage relative to competitors who have,” Shaoyu Yuan, an international relations adjunct professor at New York University who specialises in China’s soft power, told Rest of World. “If you’re building a startup or making investment decisions, reading about BYDi’s vertical integration is one thing. Walking through the factory floor is another.”

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