Chapter 48 47. Dalian Software Park: Software Made in China

Dalian Software Park with "Northeast Asia Software Outsourcing Service Center" and China's leading software city Dalian are another possibility for China's urban economic development.Dalian, in northeast China, bills itself as the most open and dynamic port city in northern China.Because it is adjacent to Japan, South Korea, and the Far East of Russia, Dalian hopes to become the central city of the Northeast Asian economic zone. In 1998, after careful consideration, Dalian chose the software and information service industry as the pillar of urban economic development, instead of choosing manufacturing and industry that can quickly generate economic benefits and solve employment problems like most Chinese cities.This has allowed Dalian to develop a non-polluting and high value-added industry, and its beautiful living environment has not been damaged.It is rated as one of the world's top 500 cities by the United Nations Environment Programme, and is also known as China's "Model City for the Internationalization of the Software Industry".

On the third day of the Lunar New Year in 1998, Sun Yinhuan set off from Dalian to Shenyang in a black Audi. 49-year-old Sun Yinhuan is officially the chairman of Dalian Yida Group Co., Ltd. and a real estate businessman. In 1984, 35-year-old Sun Yinhuan formed a construction team and entered the real estate industry. He earned 3.5 million that year. Four years later, he established a joint venture housing development company with others, formally entering the real estate industry, instead of just staying in the decoration and construction of the periphery.In this lucrative industry, it took Sun Yinhuan 10 years to become one of the Big Three in Dalian's real estate industry. The Taoshan community developed by Yida is the second largest residential community in Dalian.Sun Yinhuan also set foot in the machine tool manufacturing industry.The Dalian Bohai Machine Tool Factory he established and the Dalian Bohai Riping Machine Tool Co., Ltd. jointly established by Nihon Hira Toyama Co., Ltd. is the first Sino-foreign joint venture company in China's modular machine tool industry.Sun Yinhuan himself has won numerous entrepreneurial honors and has become a pivotal figure in Dalian's business circle.

But sitting on the speeding Audi car, Sun Yinhuan felt uneasy. In 1993, the Dalian Municipal Government incorporated Youjia Village, Hongqi Town, owned by Sun Yinhuan Company, into the scope of Dalian High-tech Industrial Park.As the best real estate company in Hongqi Town, Yida has accepted the commission of Dalian Municipal Government to develop Youjia Village Industrial Base in Dalian High-tech Industrial Park.Sun Yinhuan first built a workshop here for his machine tool company for machine tool manufacturing; then he built a building as a research institute.However, other places are still overgrown with weeds. Sun Yinhuan is looking for new projects everywhere, but has not been able to achieve his wish for several years.Sun Yinhuan's own idea is that it is best to find a sustainable high-tech related project, and this project should preferably be done by a leading company in the industry.

Gu Yuande, the deputy director of Dalian Hi-Tech Park, once told Sun Yinhuan that Neusoft Group, a software company in Shenyang, thought about building a software development base in Dalian, and its chairman Liu Jiren once visited Dalian in person.Overjoyed, Sun Yinhuan immediately asked Gu Yuande to contact Liu Jiren on his behalf.This long date began in October 1997, until the day of the Chinese New Year in 1998, when Liu Jiren and Sun Yinhuan finally made an appointment, so Sun Yinhuan and Gu Yuande went to Shenyang together on this day to visit Liu Jiren. Since it was still the New Year, there were very few vehicles on the expressway from Dalian to Shenyang, and the Audi cars in which Sun Yinhuan and Gu Yuande were riding went unimpeded.However, Sun Yinhuan was not sure how this big man in the software industry, whom he often heard about but had never met, would react to his proposal.

Born in northeast China in 1955, Liu Jiren is a professor turned entrepreneur.The tall and handsome Liu Jiren has always had a bright future in academics.He received a bachelor's degree in computer software from the Department of Electronics, Northeastern University in 1980.His doctoral dissertation was completed at the National Bureau of Standards Institute of Computing. At the age of 33, he has become a professor.When he returned home, he dreamed of establishing a research institute similar to the National Bureau of Standards Computer Research Institute. "Can I establish such a mechanism so that the Chinese software industry can establish a good connection with my research center. We provide basic research, and they get commercial profits, and then give funds to support our research," Liu Jiren recalled Say.But he was disappointed to find that the domestic software industry is so fragile that those companies have no time to take care of themselves, let alone provide support for the software research of universities.

As a result, Liu Jiren founded a company called Neusoft with his colleagues in a classroom at Northeastern University in 1991 with the support of Northeastern University. In the second year, it successfully allotted shares and became the first software company in mainland China to be listed on the A-share market. In Sun Yinhuan's view, Liu Jiren was exactly the kind of person he was looking for. His industry and his status in this industry made him and his company the best candidates to settle in Youjia Village.However, Liu Jiren had his own concerns. When he recalled later, Liu Jiren said: "Before this, I had never dealt with private entrepreneurs, and they might be a bit high-spirited. In those years, some real estate developers were indeed very irregular in their work, relying on messy methods. Relationship, who does he (real estate agent) trust? Just trust money, and it has to be fast money."

Later records say that the two men hit it off quite well.Liu Jiren felt that Sun Yinhuan was different from those real estate developers he thought, in that he was far-sighted and simple and sincere. According to the book "Beyond Made in China: The Rise of Dalian, a Leading Software City" published by Gao Lihua, a reporter from "Computer World", Sun Yinhuan, who was not good at words, said two sentences at that time, which moved Liu Jiren very much. The first sentence was: "I have a Hey, I don’t understand software, let’s do it together, I’ll listen to you, I’ll do whatever you say”; the second sentence is: “I’ll never let you worry about what I’m supposed to do, Don't worry about it."

When the two met for the second time, Sun Yinhuan invited Xia Deren, then deputy mayor of Dalian City in charge of science and technology. The mayor of Dalian at the time was Bo Xilai, one of the most charismatic and well-known politicians in China. In 1997, Bo Xilai and his colleagues were confused about finding a new economic development path for Dalian.Dalian is located in the northeast heavy industry base, and the surrounding cities, including Dalian itself, all started with heavy industry.But these heavy industries bring heavy pollution, which is obviously different from the Dalian that Bo Xilai wanted.What Bo Xilai wanted to create was a garden-like city.At the same time, in 1997, the transformation of old state-owned enterprises brought about layoffs and the resulting unemployment problem had begun to cause headaches for Bo Xilai and his colleagues.The way other cities solve this problem is to support the development of labor-intensive private enterprises. The manufacturing industry requires a large amount of labor, which can solve the employment problem and quickly create the appearance of prosperity in the city in a short period of time.Is Dalian going to take this old road?

When meeting with guests from Thailand's Chia Tai Group, Bo Xilai talked about his confusion to one of Thailand's largest enterprise groups.The guest's suggestion is that Mayor Bo can consider developing the software industry in Dalian. It will not cause pollution, and can create a large number of white-collar employees. Moreover, the added value is extremely high, which cannot be brought by ordinary manufacturing industries. . Bo Xilai immediately took out a budget of 100,000 yuan and asked the Dalian City Planning Commission and Dalian University of Technology to demonstrate the project.After the report came out, Bo Xilai, who had just returned from a visit to Singapore, made a decisive decision and proposed that Dalian should "build the Dalian Software Park and develop the information industry."

Then, on January 10, 1998, Xia Deren was transferred from his position as the president of Dongbei University of Finance and Economics to be the deputy mayor in charge of science and technology in Dalian. When he met Liu Jiren, the deputy mayor had just taken office for three months. In May 1998, the Information Industry Bureau was established in Dalian. At that time, there were no government departments with this name in any region of the country, and the Ministry of Information Industry had just been established.Bo Xilai said to the officials of the Information Industry Bureau: "Don't worry about the hard ones, just deal with the soft ones, one is informatization, and the other is the software industry."

When Liu Jiren came to Dalian, the city was ready.And Xia Deren is the best person to promote this project.Like Liu Jiren, he was born in a university. Liu Jiren was the vice president of Northeastern University. His previous position was the president of Dongbei University of Finance and Economics. Liu Jiren became a professor at the age of 33. Before Xia Deren left his post at the age of 43, he was a subject reviewer of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council. People, equivalent to faculty members.Moreover, just like Sun Yinhuan went around looking for projects for his park, Xia Deren was looking for companies and development companies to settle in with the Ruanjiayuan project.When Sun Yinhuan invited Xia Deren to attend the signing ceremony between him and Liu Jiren, Xia Deren suddenly thought that his software park was too similar to this "Youjia Village Industrial Base". On that day, an agreement of intent was supposed to be signed, but the three of them met and had a pleasant conversation. Sun Yinhuan and Liu Jiren simply signed the contract directly.However, Sun Yinhuan and Liu Jiren hoped to change the name of "Youjiacun Industrial Base" to "Dalian Software Park", while the government department believed that the name of Dalian as a city was not suitable for a park developed by private companies. At this time, Xia Deren stood up.The young mayor said: "The key depends on who can develop. This is the last word. Since Yida and Neusoft have this enthusiasm, and we also believe that they can do well, we must do our best to support them. 'Dalian Software Park'".Xia Deren also asked the traffic bureau to rename all the road signs leading to Youjia Village as "Dalian Software Park".After Mayor Bo Xilai approved the construction plan of the software park, the future Dalian Software Park was born. Subsequently, the park attracted international clients including GE, IBM, Accenture, and Hewlett-Packard.Neusoft also established a software education college in Dalian Software Park. Dalian Software Park and the software industry have become the new pride of Dalian, and Dalian has also become the software outsourcing capital of China. "Dalian is to Japan what Bangalore is to the United States," Japanese management expert Kenichi Ohmae praised Dalian.China's Premier Wen Jiabao also spoke highly of Dalian and its software industry. In 2007, Dalian even attracted an investment of US$2.5 billion from Intel. This microprocessor and chip giant will build its first chip manufacturing plant in Asia in Dalian; the 2007 Davos Economic Forum Summer Forum will The venue was chosen in Dalian.Dalian's beauty and its software industry amaze every visitor, because no one would have thought that there is a city similar to Silicon Valley in the northeast corner of the world's factory.In this year, the scale of Dalian's software shore and information service industry reached 21.5 billion yuan, and it is still growing at a rate of 50% per year.