Page 16 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

Today the compass has shifted
“The center of technology is shifting, and eastward to China. The Carlyle
China is emerging as the other major pole for Group, a Washington, D.C.–based
innovation.”
private equity firm, has wasted no
David Rubenstein, time in investing in the China tech
cofounder and managing director, rush, says David Rubenstein,
Carlyle Group Carlyle’s cofounder: “The center of
technology is shifting, and China is
emerging as the other major pole for
innovation.”
Zhongguancun Software Park is in a distant northwestern corner of
Beijing, on the way to the ancient Summer Palace of Chinese emperors. The
modern office park is one of several new bustling high-tech and science zones
and is home to some 12,000 small businesses. The sprawling district feeds off
engineering and business graduates from China’s top-tier Tsinghua University
and Beijing University, just as Stanford University grads helped transform
California’s Silicon Valley from fertile agricultural land to Tech Central 30
years ago. Len Baker, a boyish 64-year-old partner at the venture capital firm
that funded Oracle Corp., Sutter Hill Ventures, is mining for start-up gems in
China. “China is where Silicon Valley was three decades ago when several
high-tech companies got their start,” he declares.
The in thing among bright young Chinese techies is to draw up a business
plan, get financing, scale the start-up to sizable revenues and profits, and then
go public in the United States. An army of so-called technopreneurs like Wang
are turbocharging world-class enterprises. Call them collectively a new rival
to the Valley’s tech dominance, or Silicon Dragon.
A rising supply of tech talent and surplus capital is feeding the dragon. 2
Thousands of Western-educated and -trained young Chinese—the first gen-
eration to study and work abroad since Chinese communism began in 1949—
have returned to their homeland with advanced degrees and Valley
entrepreneurial know-how to crank up businesses. The reforms of former
leader Deng Xiaoping and his frequently quoted 1992 phrase “to get rich is
glorious” unleashed change, and tech entrepreneurship has proved to be a
golden path to cashing in.
There’s still a lack of managerial and leadership experience at many
Chinese tech start-ups that puts them at a competitive disadvantage in

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