Dai Yulin

Dalian, a coastal city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, is set for a breakthrough in promoting its software industry in the global market.

Since 2000, the sales volume of the country's software industry has grown at an average annual rate of 30 per cent, contributing greatly to the country's overall economic growth.

Dalian, one of the country's leading software industry centres, has also witnessed an increase in its software industry averaging 70 per cent from 2001 to 2004.

An international fair of software products and IT services, held in Dalian annually since 2003, has played a major role in propelling the city's software industry development.

Even though Dalian can neither compare with the municipalities of Shanghai and Beijing, nor with the better developed large cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou in terms of technological resources and the number of professionals, its software industry has made significant strides in opening to world markets.

To this end concrete steps to develop IPR-based software products, train specialists, and improve IT services, so as to comprehensively upgrade its software industry are, and have been taken.

Over the past five years, several of the city's 450-odd software companies have attracted investment of the Microsoft, Intel, NEC and other foreign giants.

At the same time, the municipal government has organized visits by software companies to counterpart industries in Japan, the Republic of Korea(ROK), the United States, India and the Republic of Ireland. In the last five years, more than 10 subsidiary companies of the city's software industry have been set up in Japan, the ROK, the US and Malaysia. At the same time, 22 multinational software firms and IT companies have set up branches in Dalian.

To improve the software industry in Dalian, the city will invite well-known foreign and domestic companies to set up headquarters for technological development, support and service covering the global market, especially the Asia-Pacific Region.

The city will also recruit a great number of high-level specialists from home and abroad. By 2010, the city's software industry will need 150,000 professionals.

Currently there are 180 educational institutions providing job training for the software industry, most of which have already begun co-operating in this area with agencies from Japan, India, the US and ROK.

The city's software development park today has 200 software engineers from Japan, the ROK, India, Republic of Ireland, Germany and the US and plans to recruit even more from overseas.

To help develop the software industry, Dalian will also promote business process outsourcing (BPO) services for foreign companies.

In recent years, the global software industry and BPO services have been developing very fast. Statistics indicate that before 2015, the US will transfer 3.3 million BPO service jobs to other countries. And by 2010, Japan will shift around 200,000 such jobs abroad.

Dalian plans to register a business income of 50 billion yuan (US$6.02 billion) in the next 10 years by developing BPO services, creating 150,000 job opportunities.

Dalian also intends to make greater efforts in developing the computer software industry, to help boost the local economy and manufacturing industries across Northeast China's provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

Major software companies are encouraged to develop embedded software products to help upgrade the digital control level of the manufacturing industry.

Specifically, software companies will focus on areas such as the digital control of high-performance machine tools, automobile navigation positioning systems and integrated circuit design.

Urgent upgrading of the IT of companies in the northeast, along with the campaign to revitalize the old industries is required.

In addition, the city is determined to produce high-quality software products which are self-developed and carry IPR protection.

Currently, most software companies in Dalian undertake jobs entrusted by foreign companies. They are weak in developing their own namebrand products.

The municipal government of Dalian will lend powerful support to software companies, to encourage them to develop patented technologies and products.

Since the software industry is fledgling and competitive, it needs to be nurtured by software parks, software institutes and software companies, which can be operated by private institutions with government support.

(China Daily 02/28/2005 page5)