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Guangzhou is the capital city and the political, economic, scientific and technological, educational and cultural center of Guangdong Province, China. It is the largest coastal city in the south of China and located in the mid-south of Guangdong Province and the north of the Pearl River Delta. Guangzhou borders on the South China Sea and is adjacent to Hong Kong and Macao.
Guangzhou municipal administration has finalized to turn IT service into the buttress force for the city. It will put its full weight behind the local software industry by mapping out more favorable policies. The city welcomes the foreign big software companies as well as supporting the growth of native small and mid-sized software developers.At present, Guangzhou software industry is developing at a rapid pace. Software export is increasing too. The size and breadth of software outsourcing market are being extended gradually and steadily. The software on telecom, finance, trade, tax, education, recreation and office automation leads the market in China. The turnover increased by 35% in the past two years.Now, Guangzhou is at full speed building up Guangzhou Software Park. In 1999, Guangzhou Software Park, composed of Tianhe Software Park, Guangdong Software Science Park and Nansha IT Park, was established and designated as the software industry base of the Chinese National Torch Plan. By now, there are over 1000 software companies residing in Guangzhou Software Park, indicating the strong momentum of the development.
1. Software industry develops rapidlyIn
2005, there are 1100 software companies at Guangzhou. The turnover reached US$3 billion, 8.1 times more than in 1999. About 193 companies passed ISO9000 and over 20 companies got CMM-2 or above certifications. Guangzhou has advantages over IT service and telecom industries in China. So far Guangzhou is standing above other cities in sectors of software, telecom, office automation, cyber game, consumer electronics, finance, and so on. The latest figures show that Guangdong's manufacturing industry will be worth of 350 billion US$ by 2010, which will generate huge demands of 25 billion US$ for IT services. Most of the World top 500 multinationals have set up branches or subsidiaries in Guangzhou, making the city a huge arena of IT services.
2. Extending outsourcing market and field steadily
Now Guangzhou is becoming a new important international outsourcing area and a new software export base. As of one of Europe and the U.S.-oriented software outsourcing bases, the Guangzhou software park is getting orders from its clients in Europe, U.S. and Japan. NIIT, the biggest IT training company in India, has settled down in Tianhe Software Industry Park in a bid to further sharpen its competitiveness globally. The park hopes to have about 10 Japan-oriented, 20 Europe- focused software outsourcing companies in the coming three or five years, reaching a software export revenue of USD 50 million. This year, Guangzhou government will come up with a series of favorable policies to encourage software companies to get CMM certifications and provide them with subsidies for overseas training and attending expos. 3.Software outsourcing investment increasing
Guangzhou's Software and software outsourcing are new growth industries attracting foreign investment. Till 2005, there are 453 foreign invested companies at Guangzhou, including information transportation, computer application software, and data processing and so on. The total investment amount reached 3 billion US dollars by the end of 2005. German RIB Group has invested 6 million US dollars for the first phase to build a German-oriented software outsourcing center, and it plans to reach 10,000 employees in scale finally. Japanese TRANSCOSMOS has also set up its Guangzhou software technology company, and invested 5 million US dollars to establish a R&D centre with 10,000 square meters. It aims to build a 30,000 square meters offshore software development base here gradually. Tianhe Software Industry Park has registered 200 million US dollars for construction. Thus far, a long list of IT behemoths such as Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Huawei Technologies, ZTE, NEC, Kingdee, and UFsoft have signed agreements with the park and will settle there soon. 4. Software talents and Intelligence denseness
There are 32 high colleges and universities, including Zhongshan University and South China University of Technology, 193 R&D institutions, 31,000 software industry staffs and 15,000 special technicians of software development in Guangzhou. In order to make full use of local intellectual resources, Guangzhou authorities gradually establish and perfect talents encouragement system. Take full consideration of the knowledge and economic interests of the talents when making policies on commercialization of hi-tech, share investment by immaterial capital, so as to stabilize and develop the local talent team. However, the number and quality of the local talents still can not match up with the large demand for the development of information technology of Guangzhou. We plan to make use of the favorable investment environment, open the door to attract IT talents from outside. The students studying abroad are the valuable intellectual resources. Since 1998, Guangzhou has held “Science & Technology Fair for Students Studying Abroad (Guangzhou)” (also known as Guangzhou Intelligence Fair) which arouses strong reaction home and abroad, and strengthened the technological exchanges between Guangzhou and the students studying abroad, even where they study. Guangzhou has set up well-equipped “Developing Park for Returned Students” and “Returned Students Fund” to attract more and more returned students to start an undertaking at Guangzhou.
5. Well-developed IT infrastructure and service system
Guangzhou, a key communication center of China, has one of the three international telecom exchangers of China and one of the three hubs of Internet. The communication network ranks first in China with regard not only the scale but also the function. The transmission network platform technology has catch up with the advanced nations. The construction of optical fiber network has been undertaken for many years and the network has covered major buildings and residential areas. The local government further supports to establish software technology infrastructure and service system. A municipal organization information exchange public platform with the municipal information network exchange center at the core and a large number of organizations’ internal information and public service database have been created. Over 90% large and medium sized enterprises and quite a number of small enterprises have set up their intranets and made communication and cooperation through Internet.
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