This is because I would like to visit/live in places like these before they become well known (kind of like a hipster, but with less facial hair)
What do you hope to gain out of living in these places? There are plenty of foreigners who have been in Shenzhen for over a decade and are only marginally more interesting or successful now than when they arrived. The location rarely changes what's inside. If you find Shenzhen interesting, just come! It (and the rest of the HK+PRD megalopolis) is not even close to peaking in terms of creative or engineering output. Just bear in mind that there will always be a barrier. If you're thinking of turning into a local you need to be either (A) a skilled Chinese (B) an extremely well capitalized foreign company (C) an extremely skilled foreigner willing to spend years in the city and learn the language to fluency.
All that being said, you want to look for cities with strong population growth trends, very low wages, and huge levels of government investment. India is probably your best bet, though I know nothing about it other than what's in the news that they want to be the next China. That will be tough since India is missing some absolutely fundamental pre-requisites to the kind of growth China has had.
Interested to hear what you think these are?
1> Infrastructure - You can't get China-like public utilities (road, transport, electricity, water ...) 2> Blatant corruption -> While corruption in China is at the communist party level, every step you take in India requires a bribe, or things move at snail pace. 3> No hardware ecosystem - both the design and manufacturing skills and resources are considerably weaker than China
India Pros - 1> IP protection laws are stronger and more enforcible. 2> English fluency is high - hence communication is less of a barrier 3> Well established software and back-end-office sector. 4> Government policies are not as protectionist. 5> More conducive to free speech, so a Facbook/Google can actually thrive in India
Conclusion - Bangalore/India is the Shenzhen of software, but definitely not close in hardware.
There is nothing like it on the horizon, though if you're in the states take a look at the revival of manufacturing in the old rust belt cities
India is not going to take the lead in manufacturing anytime soon, but if you look at mobile tech, retail tech, payments, robotics and solar ... there's super exciting stuff happening.
Plus it is a validated market - every month sees billions of dollars of VC investment in India.
It's not perfect - for example we are already at the stage where local, homegrown startups are competing against the valley behemoths ... and gave been found lacking. But the game is just getting heated up.
(I'm a YC startup based out of India )
[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...