China is now tapping India's rich resources and expertise in IT education to meet its great demand for software professionals.
Aptech, an India-based international IT company known for its education of computer programmers, has recently signed a deal with the Beijing Beida Jade Bird Group to established a joint venture company in Beijing to replicate its education methods in China.
It is the first Indian Company to invest in the education of software professionals in China.
Ever since its establishment early last year, the company has begun its rapid expansion across the country, with more than 20 local arms established. "More are in the pipeline," said Su Weizhen, vice-president of the Jade Bird who is involved in the deal with Aptech.
For Aptech, China appears to be the right place to sell its expertise, as well as its prestige.
China has a relatively under-developed software industry compared with its fast-growing hardware manufacturing sector.
It has far less software companies and programmers than India, where thousands of software companies are churning out quality software products each day.
As compared with India, which exported approximately US$4 billion-worth of software last year, China's software industry is still in its infancy after decades of development.
India's success has sent shockwaves across China's information industry, which has for decades followed in the footsteps of the United States and focused on the manufacturing of hardware.
It has been widely noted that India's IT education system has played a key role in fuelling its software industry.
Yang Min, general manager of the joint venture, noted that India's mature IT professional education system has steadily produced crops of so-called "IT blue-collars" to fill the large-scale assembly line of software programing in the country.
"In India, almost 90 per cent of the IT professionals are the blue-collars," Yang said.
By contrast, China's IT education has for decades focused on college students, following an approach of elite cultivation.
The result is an output of only 50,000 IT-related graduates each year, compared with the market demand of at least 400,000 each year.
Almost half of them pursue senior technological or managerial positions after a couple of years of work experience.
This inevitably makes it difficult for the industry to grow, said Yang.
In line with its goal to cultivate middle-level professionals, the teaching of Aptech is more "professional" than those of colleges.
Most of their courses are designed to train students to do things right while college teaching in China is intended to encourage students to choose the right things to do. "We need both," Yang said. "But presently we are in more urgent need of the former if we want to have a software industry of India's size."
"We are not subordinate to India in the cultivation of senior and top-notch talents," Yang said, "But in terms of middle-level talents, we are far behind."
The joint venture focuses on the cultivation of such talent.
Aptech provides the textbooks and the training for teachers, and authorizes the joint venture company to issue its certificates.
Jade Bird provides the teaching facilities and helps in the marketing of the brand.
The joint venture is run as a franchise.
For years, it has been a dream of many young people in China to earn a programmer certificate issued by Microsoft or Cisco.
Many computer education schools in Beijing were targeting such certificate pursuers and made big profits.
With the arrival of Aptech, the situation changes.
Zhang Tong, a student at the Beijing Aptech training centre, said he did not come to the centre merely for a certificate, but a complete education.
"It's not like the Cisco or Microsoft certificate that is basically associated with the technologies of their companies," said Zhang, who studied maths at college. "Here I can have a broader range of courses and better understanding of IT technologies as a whole."
(China Daily 07/12/2001)
