Wang Miaoyi's small one-bedroom apartment, which doubles as her design studio, is overflowing with game magazines, figurines and boxes of sci-fi novels.

The 30-year old game developer is a child of the county's tech boom: She studied at one of China's top universities and her company hit it big with an award-winning game that was published on Nintendo's Switch console and the PC gaming platform Steam, with plans for roll-out on other game platforms.

Now her ambitions — and those of many others across China's giant tech industry — are facing a reckoning, amid rising state control over the sector, tightening regulation and a biting trade war with the United States stymieing growth.