Artificial intelligence is the fourth industrial revolution, and Shenzhen is unusually well placed to turn it into industrial horsepower. That was the message from Chen Zhilie, a standing member of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, at the latest edition of the committee’s lecture series.
Chen is not a casual observer. He founded Evoc, one of the city’s longer-established industrial-computer companies, and he speaks from the vantage point of a manufacturer who has watched software eat the factory floor.
His argument is blunt: AI’s real value is not in chat windows but in the retrofit of traditional industry. The companies that absorb it fastest will not be the ones with the cleverest models, but the ones with the densest manufacturing base to aim them at.
What Shenzhen actually has
Chen’s case for Shenzhen rests on three things most cities lack at the same time: a deep bench of hardware and electronics supply chains, a large population of factories already wired for automation, and a tolerance for fast, messy iteration. He proposes a ‘technology-industry-ecosystem’ collaborative innovation system, with leading enterprises taking the lead and pulling the wider supply chain up behind them.
It is a familiar Shenzhen story told in a new register. The city made its name assembling other people’s designs; the bet now is that the same density and speed can be pointed at industrial AI, where the product is not a gadget but a productivity gain measured on the shop floor.
Whether the ecosystem framework delivers is a question for the next few years. But the framing matters: Shenzhen is positioning itself not as a model trainer but as the place where models meet machines.
Translated and adapted from Shenzhen News (sznews.com).
Source: https://www.sznews.com/news/content/2026-07/28/content_32134788.htm