Shenzhen, a city in southeastern China that is home to several of the Asian country's technology giants, announced today that it will invest 160 billion yuan (21 billion euros) in technology over the course of 2025.
The money will be spent on "new-type infrastructure" to enable the city to "fully compete" in emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI), Shenzhen Mayor Qin Weizhong said at the local government's annual summit, which kicked off on Tuesday.
The report presented by the mayor sets the economic growth target for this year at 5.5%, along with other goals, such as the generation of 200,000 new jobs.
Shenzhen is part of the Greater Bay Area project - a global metropolis built from Hong Kong and Macao, and nine cities in Guangdong province, through the creation of a single market and increasing connectivity between roads, rail and sea routes.
Guangdong has set a target of 5% growth this year, despite having failed to meet its targets in the last three years, in the context of a slowdown in the Chinese economy, and despite being the Chinese province that exports the most.
Shenzhen faces increasing competition from other major Chinese tech hubs, including Hangzhou in the east, which is home to emerging companies such as AI platform DeepSeek and robotics firm Unitree.
Once a fishing village bordering Hong Kong, Shenzhen became a global base for electronics manufacturing and home to the country's top technology firms, including telecoms group Huawei, electric carmaker BYD and internet giant Tencent, after China opened up to a market economy in the 1980s.
