SHANGHAI — The concrete jungle of Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park was once thronging with investors looking to finance China’s burgeoning tech whizzes. But these days, few people visit 38-year-old Xia Qing’s lab, once a haven for innovators.
“In its heyday three years ago, we had 50 to 60 visitors coming to our makerspace every open night — around 10 were investors looking for businesses,” says Xia, the co-founder of Mushroom Cloud, one of the first makerspaces in China, as he uses a giant laser cutter. “Now if 20 [visitors] show up in a night, that’s not bad.”
Times have changed for makers — people who like to tinker, experiment, and create electronic hardware from scratch — and their communal workshops, or makerspaces. The maker culture originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-2000s, while China’s maker movement began in 2010 with Taiwanese startup…
