Expert: China's Software Industry Needs Int'l CooperationThe rapid growth of the global software industry has provided China with excellent chances to develop its software industry, but it needs international cooperation for this.Jin Hui, director of the Xi'an Software Industry Park, made this remark at an evaluation of the park's performance in the less than one year since it was set up. He said the park had earned two billion yuan (about 240 million US dollars) and exported two million US dollars-worth of products by the end of last year, only six months after it had been set up, in June 1999. "We attribute our good performance to extensive cooperation with foreign software enterprises," Jin said. China's software industry has developed rapidly in recent years, with software companies emerging across the nation. The Shaanxi provincial capital city of Xi'an alone has more than 300 software companies at present, and is expected to have over 1,500 companies in four years. But all these companies are small-sized, half of them having fewer than 50 employees. Jin said the limited scale of local companies is the major hindrance to the development of China's software industry, and only through cooperation with large foreign counterparts can China 's software industry develop properly. China's software sales account for only one percent of the world's total, and its market has great potential, he added. Xi'an enjoys an advantage for software development -- more than 7,000 B.A. and M.A. students majoring in computer science graduate from over 40 universities and colleges in Shaanxi annually, serving as a large reserve force for software research. "Foreign enterprises will be greatly attracted by China's rich resources of software talent and low costs," said Yang Haicheng, deputy president of the Northwest China Engineering University, which is based in Xi'an. According to Jin Hui, a software development platform jointly built by IBM of the United States and the Xi'an Software Industry Park will be operational soon. |
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