The software industry is developing at an increase rate of 30 percent a year in China. This is learned from a recent interview with Chen Chong, President of China Software Industry Association (CSIA), concurrently deputy director with the department of e-info product control of the Ministry of Information Industry. The topic is centered on the development strategy of China's Software Industry and the relations with Japan in the future.
The Chinese software industry is advancing at a rapid pace. Please say something about its development strategy in the future:
China has worked out a plan for further strengthening its software industry before 2005 by adopting some practical measures. The Chinese government made public its "No.18 Document" in June of 2001, i.e. "Policies on encouraging the development of software and integrated circuit industries". The major content is centering on the domestic market and the world market with the training of personnel and development of software as the point to be emphasized. That is by making efforts to realize an industry scale of RMB 250 billion-yuan in the year of 2005 with its exportation to harvest US$ 2 billion and to turn out more than hundred brand names with 800,000 people engaged in the work of development.
With regard to the product it is to develop the software for supporting the domestic operation system based on Linux. This is because the system caters to the practical conditions for its development in China and in consideration of the urgent need for developing the applicable software. For the opening source code used by Linux is of certain advantage and users can make adaptable modifications quite freely. This may exert a great impact on the software for business uses, and so China is considering of using it in the domestic operation system for the e-government
In the field of strengthening the cooperation with Japan, what kind of work is the CSIA ready to carry out?
At present, in the software business exchanges between China and Japan the Chinese side is in charge of the low-grade work of program designing and single-unit testing for Japan, a lopsided work for processing industry. It is hoped that China can do some work for the development of main system, which can be used by large enterprises of the two countries. China is capable to engage in the work for developing product of higher additional value. Besides, for China and Japan to use system of common configuration is a good conception catering to the globalization of economy.
The software industry has seen a rapid development in Dalian. Especially, in the field of developing the software for Japan it is well ahead of others in the country. As a national organization, the CSIA hopes that the Dalian pattern can be promoted to all over the country with Shanghai and Beijing, the big cities to take the lead.
For China's software industry, who do you think to be the partner of more importance, the USA or Japan?
According to the present situation though Beijing and Shanghai are not intentionally tending to the USA yet it's quite natural for enterprises to cast their eyes on the USA and have a deeper relationship with the enterprises in Europe and the USA since many business orders are coming that way. However, the software enterprises in Dalian, which has a lot to do with Japan, have recently witnessed a big development while affected by the slowdown of the US economy the software industry in Beijing and Shanghai see a downturn of business orders from the USA. Beginning to look for a new way out, they start to set their eyes on the Japanese enterprises.
The strong point for the USA is on the operational system and intermediary parts, its weak point lying in the software for business application. For example, the IBM is in charge of certain e-government project in Beijing. At the very beginning we deemed that all the work were to be carried out solely by the IBM. However, we got to know later almost all the work for applicable software were undertaken by software enterprises in Beijing. Japan, for quite a long time, is good at applicable software for systems of large-banking corporations and so we think it's better to have a combination of the strong points from both sides.
( People's Daily August 6, 2002)
