China's booming tech industry
Western companies are setting the stage to compete against China as well as take advantage of its highly-trained, yet cheap labor force.
Everywhere you look, people are talking about China as the world's next economic superpower. The world's most populous nation is poor, but a growing middle class hungry for technology makes it the largest potential consumer market in the world. And the country's large concentration of universities also makes it a hotbed of technology innovation.
Last week at an investment conference in New York City, Cisco Systems' CEO John Chambers and other top executives from big companies like Nortel Networks said that their biggest competition in the future will come from Chinese manufacturers like Huawei Technologies and ZTE. China's advantage is that it is home to thousands of well-trained and very smart engineers who are willing to work for a fraction of the salary that Western engineers demand.
Some U.S.-based companies like Microsoft are taking advantage of this cheap talent pool by establishing research centers there. Earlier this week, The New York Times published a story on foreign tech investment in China that's worth checking out.
It's little wonder that technology companies see China as both a threat and an opportunity. The country is emerging as a major player in the global economy. National Public Radio recently did an amazing seven part series on China. NPR's Rob Gifford spent two weeks traveling 3,000 miles across the country on Route 312, a highway reminiscent of the old U.S. Route 66. It's definitely worth checking out.