China’s Silicon Valley, According to Tencent Chairman

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 2:16PM EST · Published Mar 4, 9:35AM EST

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China’s Silicon Valley, According to Tencent Chairman — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”509260″ placement=”ros”]A number of places have claimed to be the “next Silicon Valley.” While the one in California won’t go away, New York City, the research triangle in North Carolina and even Detroit say they will draw the best of tech talent due to special opportunities they can provide in the industry. The latest version of Silicon Valley will be in China, according to Ma Huateng, Tencent’s chairman and deputy of the National People’s Congress.

Among his proposals made Friday, according to the People’s Daily:

China should introduce favorable policies to turn the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area into the cradle of China’s “Silicon Valley”, national legislator Ma Huateng said on Friday.

Constructing a world-class high-tech Bay Area is critical to implementing China’s innovation-driven strategy, said Ma, who also chairs internet giant Tencent, at a news conference ahead of the fifth session of the 12th National People’s Congress, which begins on Sunday.

The proposal is also conducive to the long-term prosperity of the region, he said, especially for Hong Kong and Macao, which have untapped potential to deepen economic interdependence with the mainland.

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Also:

To bolster growth, Ma encouraged the adoption of preferential tax rebate policies in the area and loosening entry permission between the mainland and Hong Kong to retain talent.

The hurdles to the fulfillment of his dream are very high. China does not have world-class universities like Harvard, where Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was educated, and Stamford, where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin attended PhD programs.

China also does not have major corporations that produce a massive share of the world’s intellectual property. These do not only include tech firms. Old-world companies General Motors and General Electric are among companies that file the most patents each year.

China doesn’t have what is needed to build its own Silicon Valley, and it may not ever.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.