SHENZHEN, China -- Chinese technology is chock-full of awkward analogies and misfit metaphors. The social network formerly known as "the Facebook of China" (Renren) turned out to be a flop, "the Twitter of China" (Weibo) is slowly sliding toward irrelevance, and e-commerce behemoth Alibaba has burst out of several rhetorical straitjackets.
But recently, international tech circles have been buzzing about a new analogy, one that doesn't pigeonhole its subject as "the [insert U.S. tech giant] of China" but instead embeds it firmly in global innovation networks. They're talking about the city of Shenzhen, and they're calling it the Silicon Valley of hardware.