Research made real at Xi’an tech transfer market

Email|Print|Comments       twitter     facebook     Sina Microblog     reddit    

A little device can make a big difference — which is the way the Xi’an Hi-Tech Zone has been trying to distinguish itself from so many new industrial parks in China.

Developed on former vegetable plots and fish ponds outside the ancient city of Xi’an in Shaanxi province, the zone now hosts operations from 100-plus Fortune 500 companies amid a community of 18,000 local companies in electronics and I.T., high-end manufacturing, bio-engineering and new services.

Though more than 1,000 kilometers from Beijing, Shanghai or any seaport, there is one thing that helps it attract so many entrepreneurs, investors and young engineers from all of China and even the world — the Xi’an Technology Resources Market.

“Ours is a team of only 10 people,” said Huang Haidong, deputy director of the tech market, a government-run service to promote transfer of technologies, or sales of inventions to local companies. The website of Huang’s office is www.xatrm.com.

“We help the government to give out money and don’t make a profit,” Huang said, but the operation has given a big push to the rise in the general quality of all companies in the zone.

Before the decision by Korean electronics giant Samsung to build a production facility in the zone, the area was strewn with small technology firms owned by private investors and joined by young college graduates.

But a closer look at the companies shows the majority of them are not the kind you would see from the United States. Most don’t develop science. They refine industrial solutions.

The ideas and basic designs are mostly from elsewhere, such as universities and research bodies based around Xi’an, and also from other Chinese cities.

By passing on their ideas and designs to the young production and process specialists in the zone’s small companies, the research specialists can earn a quick, although not necessarily immense, return from their lab work.

If the small companies can manage the process of monetizing the ideas and designs they bought, they can earn an early-stage advantage in the marketplace much more quickly than traditional small firms.

Many have gained a foothold because their leaders and staff tend to be younger and can afford to do more hard work.

We Recommend

• Mountain of garbage in Nairobi
• Highlights of MAKS 2013 Int'l Aviation and Space Show
• 10th China-ASEAN Expo opens in Nanning
• Eagle Boy takes to sky to break another record
• 12-year-old boy becomes pillar of the family
• Eye-gouged boy receives blind rehabilitation in Shanxi
• Top 10 naked hotels in the world
• The most gorgeous Chinese women in the eyes of foreigners
• A collection of bizarre rooftop buildings around China