Even so, the flow of tech pilgrims remains strong, including American visitors despite escalating U.S.-China technology tensions.
"The people who are actually on the ground trying to build physical products don't care about the politics at all," says Joshua Woodard, a U.S. manufacturing consultant based in Shenzhen.
"U.S. robotics companies still heavily source components and hardware from China. We pretend we can do it all ourselves in America, but it is incredibly hard to completely decouple."
No city embodies the trend more than Shenzhen.
The southern technology hub is positioning itself as a showcase for Chinese innovation as it prepares to host this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November.
Foreign visitor numbers rose 70% last year, and jumped over 30% in the first quarter, with over 5 million entries recorded this year through August.
Taxis now carry English-language announcements and foreign influencers regularly appear at tech exhibitions. Local firms are even establishing Silicon Valley-style "hacker houses" for foreign robotics and AI hardware entrepreneurs to live and work, according to Woodard.
"There are WeChat groups with 400 people bouncing between Silicon Valley and Shenzhen, casually crowdsourcing battery or display factories," says Woodard, who runs Shenzhen factory tours for foreign entrepreneurs in his spare time.
"Founders are dropping in cold on the 10-day visa-free entry policy ... just trying to suss out who can build their next prototype."
The influx highlights Shenzhen's transformation from a low-cost production hub to the front line of China's push for technological leadership.
Czech entrepreneur Jan Smejkal, who has lived in the city for 11 years, says scarcely a day passes without a request from foreign startup founders keen to visit.
"There is no other place on earth that takes technology to its core and integrates it into daily life quite like Shenzhen."
(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Shri Navaratnam)
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