Dalian's livability helping fuel its technology advances

Two decades ago, many Chinese students majored in computer science sought better job prospects in Japan, the United States or Europe. But now, many Americans, Europeans and Japanese are looking for similar deals by heading to Chinese shores - more specifically to Dalian, Liaoning province.

Lush greenery of trees and plants cover nearly half of the northeastern coastal city, which is kept safe and comfortable by mounted policewomen patrolling its garden-like streets.

So when local authorities encouraged the development of the city's IT sector, Dalian's pleasant living environment and climate made it the obvious choice for many transnational corporations looking to set up their Asia-Pacific centers.

"We aim to build Dalian into a leading city for software and information services," said Party chief of the Dalian municipal committee, Xia Deren, who also said in a conference in Beijing in March 2010 that Dalian will "overtake Bangalore in five to seven years".

Close to Japan, a neighbor with strong digital industries, Dalian is home to many small software start-ups dealing with software outsourcing orders from Japanese companies.

To tap the resources, the Dalian Software Park (DLSP) was founded by local private developer Yida Group in 1998, the first of its kind in the country. The park was initially designed as the backyard of Japan's software industry.

But the target clients could not yet support the park's development adequately because most Japanese companies were very guarded and relatively small.

But in 2002, multinational corporation GE expanded the content of outsourcing services in Dalian.

GE and two other companies also founded a company called Genpact to deal with some back-end work of the financial process. GE was looking for a better place for Genpact and a business process outsourcing company needed an office in the park.

To draw the client, DLSP decided to customize a building to meet all the requirements from Genpact.

DLSP spent millions of yuan to study the construction standards and invited constructing team from overseas to supervise them.

But the work paid off. GE became the first Fortune 500 company to set up shop in the DLSP. Its single software outsourcing service was expanded into a much broader information technology outsourcing service.

After GE, other Fortune 500 companies including HSBC, Accenture, Pfizer, Nokia and IBM also came to Dalian.

The United Nations Environment Program and the International Federation of Park and Recreation Administration in 2009 also listed the DLSP on the International Awards for Livable Communities.

(China Daily 06/01/2011 page42)