To understand China’s transition from a manufacturing nation to one driven by information and creative services, go to Shenzhen and walk around the Ming-De Academy, located on a hilly site on the far eastern edge of the city. A private high school with slightly more than 300 students, Ming-De occupies the grounds of the old Honghua Dyeing Mill, an industrial behemoth that opened in 1989 and closed just 14 years later. Today, the mill’s once-crumbling reinforced-concrete buildings have been skillfully transformed into attractive spaces for educating a new generation of Chinese, who require access to the latest digital technologies.