Balaji Srinivasan, investor and former CTO of Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN), wants America to take a page from China's playbook when it comes to organizing cities around specific industries.
How China Organizes Cities Around Products
In a Sunday post on X, Srinivasan highlighted how China has built entire cities that specialize in particular products. "China has many cities that specialize in specific products," he wrote, citing examples like "Cixi for hair dryers, Wenzhou for lighters, and Ningbo for home appliances." Think Detroit's automotive legacy, but on a much broader scale across multiple industries.
The concept isn't entirely foreign to us. "We're familiar with this idea for cultural sectors, like NYC/Shanghai for finance, Silicon Valley/Shenzhen for tech, DC/Beijing for politics, and Hollywood/Hengdian for movies," Srinivasan explained. The difference is that China has systematically applied this clustering approach across manufacturing and technology sectors in ways the US hasn't fully embraced.
As a longtime advocate for "startup societies and network states," Srinivasan is reviving his earlier arguments about creating "drone zones and biotech boroughs" to give America a competitive edge globally. He even suggested that his vision of transforming Detroit into a "drone valley" might already be happening. "This actually arguably happened in nearby Columbus with the Anduril factory," he noted.
The underlying idea is that spatial concentration works because it creates ecosystems where suppliers, talent, and expertise naturally cluster together, making the whole region more competitive.
America's Early Moves Toward Strategic Clusters
Interestingly, Chinese-style industrial clusters are already emerging in the United States. New Jersey, for instance, has allocated $20 million in its fiscal 2026 budget specifically for strategic innovation clusters. The approach involves targeted incentives designed to build and shape tech talent hubs intentionally, rather than waiting for them to develop organically over decades.