China’s tech rise is creating a new kind of tourism
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- Visitors pay up to $9,000 for multi‑day tours of EV factories, robotaxis and AI/robotics firms in China.
- Tours such as the “Shanghai AI and Robotics Innovation Tour” run three to five days, covering factories, incubators, conferences and private Q&A sessions with executives.
- BYD is a tour highlight, having overtaken Tesla in global EV sales, while other featured firms include Unitree Robotics’s viral humanoid robots and DeepSeek’s ChatGPT‑like AI.
- Shaoyu Yuan, NYU adjunct professor, says the tours reflect a fear‑of‑missing‑out and give investors an informational edge over rivals.
- Chetan Shah, a Mumbai investor, says the $9k tours revealed China’s lower manufacturing costs, prompting him to exit investments that later fell and to adjust his view of global competitiveness.
Why it matters: Foreign investors gain privileged access to China’s cutting‑edge EV and AI firms for as much as $9,000, while rivals like India lose a cost advantage, prompting capital to flow toward Chinese manufacturers and reinforcing Beijing’s soft‑power leverage.
