China Rolls Up Her Sleeve for IT Strong Country

‘Around 465,000, which is little bit shy of the numbers of America, scientists and engineers are coming forward from colleges. The Beijing Genome Research Center already interpreted the gene map of rice. The 7 semiconductor factories will produce the second most semiconductors by 2004.’

It is a section of the Chinese cutting edge science industry, which is not easy to be estimated from outside. The President Jiang Zemin also proclaimed at the Political Report of the Communist Party`s 16th National Conference Opening by saying, “We will achieve economical prosperity by IT industry,” If the economical growth up to the Shaokang (intermediate life with fundamental needs are fulfilled) in the end of the 20th century was due to the heavy industry such as petroleum and chemistry and the steel industry and labor intensive industries, the role to take up the productivity by 4 times must be played by the IT industry. The spirit of the Chinese cutting edge science, which is spreading like covering the whole world, is shocking like this.

A wide difference, absurd potential=Although China became ‘the Factory of the World,’ the foundation of her cutting edge industry is still weak. The ignorance of the intellectual assets is the biggest obstacle. The capital market, where the venture businesses can borrow money, is at a beginning stage and the software development technology is not even up to India. The spending for research and development last year was 11 billion dollars, which is not up to one 20th of America (233 billion dollars).

However, China already blastoff her own satellite in the earth`s orbit, and she is working on the development of the manned space ship. It was known that the President George W. Bush, who met the President Jiang at the Texas on October, mentioned about the possibility of converting the Chinese cutting edge technology to the weapons system.

The company who represent the potential of China is the ‘local’ internet equipment company, Hwaway. The recent issue of the Business Week reported, “The Hwaway stationed in Sunjon is shocking us by writing 25~50% lower bids than world class companies such as the Sysco Systems and Notel.”

‘Market or transferring technologies’=They are the foreign cutting edge companies who raised the potential of China even bigger. The advanced countries like America classify China as ‘the long-term threat,’ but companies are hurrying to the 1.3 billion market with technologies and funds.

The world-class companies such as Erricson, Alcatel, Motorola, Notel, Lucent, and General Electric are aiming to expand the market by transferring technologies in cooperation. And the Taiwan Semiconductor decided to invest 900 million dollars to the main land on September; the cutting edge exchange between two Chinas will be activated.

The Chinese Government is enthusiastically trying to invite more than 40 thousand Chinese scientists. The reason how China succeeded on interpreting the gene map of rice was the Chinese Science Academy, who set up a genome research center for the Chinese researchers of the US Cornell University, who came to China looking for ‘trained yet inexpensive’ researchers.

Rae-Jeong Park ecopark@donga.com