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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/china/0,3800011742,39159483,00.htm

Leader: Why go 'Inside China'?
To dig beneath the clichés...

By silicon.com

Published: Monday 12 June 2006

The story of China's increasing success in various areas of business and technology has been poorly told. Across various media, we hear China is the next big opportunity - or the next big threat, depending on your viewpoint. But haven't those tales been around for more than a decade, packed full of clichés?

Two summers ago, silicon.com decided to invest in covering India, particularly that country's increasing role in IT and business services. Outsourcing, offshoring and indeed offshore outsourcing continue to be big stories and we know that going beyond taking a weekend at a Bangalore call centre - a common approach among newspapers at that time - was the right move.

But while we felt sure there were nuances to India's rise in tech, with China there is another dimension of complexity.

silicon.com's new special report on the country, dubbed Inside China, doesn't drill down on one single area of tech progress. Reporter Dan Ilett travelled there with a view to examining China in several ways. It is a place that makes products and provides services. It is a large nation that represents a tremendous market opportunity. It is also something of an anomaly - a nation where the Communist Party is seemingly becoming the Chamber of Commerce, where for the first time the world's most impressively growing economy is still largely state controlled.

Dan Ilett's reporting takes in all sorts of angles - from the academics who are also leading CEOs and CTOs, to the R&D centres western giants feel they must have there, to the internet and search giants, to the way average Chinese families see their new lives and use technology.

If one thing comes across - from the privileged position of seeing much of Dan's filed copy in advance - it is that China isn't a tech powerhouse (or market) of 1.3 billion. It is still a mostly poor country, yet one that features a top layer - still sizeable compared to other nations - that is educated, ambitious and international in outlook.

Many more ordinary people have seen tech become part of their daily lives - from mobile phones, to internet cafés, to smartcards used on public transport - but there is only an elite leading development of the tech industry.

In other words, China is increasingly much like the rest of the world.

Only don't confuse that with China not being interesting. As our special report rolls out over the next few weeks, which will include colourful diary pieces published every day covering Dan's time in the Middle Kingdom, we hope you find out something new about this fascinating place and its people.