Here's an interesting report from the Economist a few months back. It described how the Pearl River Delta of China is now an innovation hub and a region of the future. The left chart shows that number of international patent applications. The data ends in 2016 but I suspect that China had already surpassed the US in 2017. China is now world's largest patent market today.

The right bar shows that the bulk of the patent filing comes from Shenzhen, arguably already surpassing the Silicon Valley. The city that Deng Xiaoping first visited on his Southern Tour and declared that China will rise, starting from the Pearl River Delta. Indeed, we have seen that transformation especially with the internet big names like Tencent and Huawei. 

Here's a list of the most innovative and interesting Shenzhen based companies other that the two mentioned above:

1. BGI (Beijing Genome Institute - ...