Now
China's leaders are pushing for a big change: They want their country's
entrepreneurs to become innovators, too. The goal is to move away from
mere manufacturing and on to the development of patented products and
global brands.
"The local companies, they
are climbing up the value chain," Dalian Software Park Vice President
Michael Ye said. "They will become more like self-innovation companies."
Since
the 1980s, China has surged ahead as a manufacturing powerhouse, but
lagged behind in the development of original software and high-tech
products. Today, the country stands as the world's largest exporter, but
still has no compelling global brand names, such as IBM, Dell, Microsoft or Apple.
That lack of
innovation comes with a cost. For many products, from brand-name track
shoes to mobile phones, Chinese manufacturers may get less than a nickel
for every dollar spent by the U.S. consumer.
To help develop patented products for the global
market, the Chinese government has set out to turn a portion of Dalian
into a center of innovation.
Dalian is a
coastal city in Northeast China, across the Yellow Sea from the Korean
peninsula. Historically, it was known for its fishermen and farmers.
Today, Dalian's 6 million residents are prospering from a boom in
manufacturing, ship building, transportation, finance and tourism.
But the city's aim is even higher: Dalian also is
striving to become a world-class generator of new ideas. In 1998,
government officials spurred the creation of the Dalian Software Park, a
sprawling campus that mixes academic pursuits with private business
investments. The park covers several square miles and blends together
university classrooms with office buildings, research facilities,
apartments, bilingual grade schools, restaurants, recreation facilities
and more. Hundreds of foreign companies already have set up operations
there.
The software park's goal is to bring
together large numbers of students, professors and engineers from around
China and the world so that they can share ideas in a concentrated
area. Many of the park's facilities already have been built, and more
are under construction or in the planning phase. If the park achieves
its mission, it will follow the lead of California's Stanford
University, which spun off the high-tech cluster now known as Silicon
Valley.
"I think Dalian has big potential to
be successful," Ye said.
NOTE: NPR's senior business editor Marilyn Geewax recently
visited Dalian with a group of U.S. journalists. They participated in a
study tour sponsored by the nonprofit organization China-United States
Exchange Foundation.
