Hangzhou
Strategic Concepts & Mechanics
Primary Evidence
"I was much happier to live in Shanghai, where many streets have remained human-scaled rather than being built for cars. The French Concession, where I lived, remains leafy and full of cafés. Shanghai is highly walkable, and one is rarely more than a fifteen-minute walk from one of the city’s many subway stations. Shanghai has vowed to open [120 new parks every year](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor307) until 2025, when the city will reach 1,000 green spaces. The city of twenty-five million people works remarkably well. Like Tokyo, it has flourishing spaces for commerce, where little dumpling shops are tucked away even in subway stations. And Shanghai is superbly connected by high-speed rail to nearby cities—for example, Hangzhou, home to tech companies like Alibaba, and Suzhou, where many multinationals have manufacturing operations—which are themselves some of China’s most successful cities."
"Supporters of the R&D hubs say the negative view of them reflects the insecurities of engineers in Cupertino, who were losing their power as more decision-making got done in China. Before the hubs were built, Apple had been sending so many engineers to China on temporary trips that Cupertino convinced United Airlines to begin direct flights from San Francisco to Chengdu, three times a week, arguing that Apple would regularly buy enough of the thirty-six first-class seats to make it profitable. The 6,857-mile flight became United’s longest nonstop flight. Two years later, Apple again convinced United to begin flying nonstop—to Hangzhou, a tech hub on the outskirts of Shanghai. “Hangzhou is a bit of a schlepp from Shanghai,” says a former Apple executive. “Yes, you can take a bullet train, but for all the American guys getting off the plane from Cupertino, navigating the train station is kind of complicated. So Apple basically said to United, ‘Look, you put up a flight to Hangzhou and we’ll fill it for you.’ ” Apple’s signature line had long been that its products were “designed in California,” but the hubs began to indicate otherwise. China’s influence was growing, and as the hubs performed more work, the engineers there would openly question the need for so many of their counterparts to constantly fly in from America."