Special Supplement: Port on path to become another 'Silicon Valley'

In his bestseller The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman described Dalian as the 'Bangalore of China'.

Wide streets, neatly clipped green belts, clusters of scientific and research institutions as well as vast software parks connect the city's software and information industry - the markings of perhaps of another "Silicon Valley" in the making.

Flattery and exaggeration? Perhaps not.

Dalian, in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, has already been incorporated into the system chain of global software and service outsourcing and is making its presence felt on the global stage in he sector.

Through nine years of development, the software and service outsourcing sector has experienced rapid progress.

In 2006, the city registered a total software revenue of 14.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 45 percent.

Its software exports volume was $450 million, 50 percent up from that of the previous year.

And the soaring trend is showing no signs of abating.

Software sales income and export volume have posted an increase of 47 percent and 56 percent respectively in the first five months of this year.

The large influx of foreign companies in the city is creating a more diversified and internationalized community of industries.

More than one-third of the 620 software and information service companies in the city are foreign.

Among them are six of the world's top 10 computer giants like IBM, Accenture, BearingPoint, NEC, HP.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, through investment and business cooperation, a large number of domestic information companies are mushrooming and gradually gaining attention at home and abroad.

The Dalian Hi-Think Computer Technology Corp, a private company, has maintained a growth rate of 25 percent in the past 10 years.

Its market has extended to more than 270 domestic cities as well as Japan, Europe, the United States and other Asian countries or regions.

It now tops the country in software exports.

And an industrial chain is taking shape in Dalian - IT outsourcing (ITO), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and research centers.

The city has witnessed rapid development of its outsourcing business relating to Japan.

Almost all the major software Japanese companies have investment in Dalian. Sony, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, NEC, and CSK have established offshore development and service centers and software development institutions in Dalian.

The number of software companies has increased 50 times in the past nine years, making the city one the most important bases for information technology companies.

Dalian has mapped out an ambitious plan to become a major city for IT technology and an important outsourcing center in Northeast Asia.

It has set a target for four large IT service outsourcing companies to achieve a combined an annual sales income exceeding one billion yuan by 2010.

It will also set up three service outsourcing companies targeting the domestic market.

(Shanghai Start 09/07/2007 page7)