In a brightly lit corner of a showroom in Hong Kong, a 300kg black robot disappears under a stack of shelves. The rack levitates and glides towards a warehouse picker, who removes an item before the shelf is spirited away by algorithms guiding it to find the most strategic place to park based on the popularity of the goods on the shelves.

The choreographed shelving dance is orchestrated by Geek+, a Beijing-based robotics start-up that has, despite international concern over Chinese technology policies, secured foreign backers, including Intel Capital and Warburg Pincus.

Following a bruising regulatory onslaught by Beijing on its internet giants and a flurry of US sanctions against Chinese technology companies, many investors have curbed their exposure to China tech, with some declaring it uninvestable.