Central to that transformation is the Dubai Internet City (DIC) – a tech park near the upscale neighbourhood of Palm Jumeirah, a palm tree-shaped archipelago – which hosts global Big Tech companies including Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com, along with their Chinese rivals.
ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, occupies multiple floors in a DIC tower with stunning coastline views. A visit by TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi in 2024 underscored the firm’s commitment to expanding in Dubai.
Angela Ji, a Chinese national who has worked at TikTok’s Dubai office for two years, said the company offered generous packages for Chinese employees willing to relocate. The office houses hundreds of staff, according to Ji.
“Dubai makes me feel like I’m in an era of economic growth, where tech companies still spend big to expand and hire,” said Ji, who previously worked at ByteDance’s Beijing headquarters. “That makes it so different from China and elsewhere.”
Having reduced the share of oil production in its gross domestic product from 50 per cent last century to under 1 per cent today, Dubai is actively pursuing new growth engines in the tech sector.