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Chengdu
(China): It is the fastest growing software park in
China and people here claim that every second laptop being sold in
the world today runs on a computer chip manufactured here. And it
could pose a major challenge to Indian information technology hubs
and their premier position on the global IT map.
Tianfu Software Park (TSP), run on 35 sq km in Chengdu city in
southewestern China, is developed by the Chinese government-owned
Chengdu Tianfu Software Park (CTSP) Limited.
Christine Du, president of CTSP Ltd, told a visiting IANS
correspondent: "We can say now that every second laptop in the
world sold now has a chip manufactured in our software park."
Officially opened in 2005, TSP is now the fastest growing software
park in China and is all set to double the pace of its growth over
the next five years.
In fact, Indian IT giant Wipro too has opened a centre here and
according to the CTSP officials there are around 70 Indians
working in this software park.
TSP already has 200 enterprises spread over a construction area of
more than 1.3 million square metre with state-of-the-art
facilities. "We are planning to expand this construction area to
2.2 million square metres over the period of next four to five
years," said Du.
TSP has been used to set up various facilities by 23 of the
Fortune 500 companies including IBM, SAP, GE, Siemens and
Ericsson.
The reason for this massive influx of global IT giants is apparent
as a visit to this software park shows. It has state-of-the-art
infrastructure and some tax concessions too.
The TSP, unlike many of the Indian IT hubs that continue to
grapple with infrastructure bottlenecks, provides cheap and
comfortable housing at a cost that is six to eight times lower
than Beijing and many other parts of China.
To attract foreign talent and make employees of foreign companies
comfortable, the CTSP has facilitated setting up of foreign
kindergarten schools as well as international primary and
secondary schools run on American curriculum in this city of 13
million residents.
The Chinese government has invested more than US$31.2 million
annually over the last few years to develop this infrastructure
and intends to increase this spending substantially further in
future.
TSP has a professional human resources centre, which provides full
range of HR services, including recruitment, information and
training. This centre has 12,000 sq m of public training venues
and runs more than 1,000 cutting-edge courses training nearly
10,000 company employees annually. The centre also runs an
e-college, which has more than 6,000 students who are employees of
companies set up here.
It also manages an incubation centre and has so far directly
attracted investment of US$18 million. At present the number of
enterprises in TSP has crossed the mark of 200 and it includes
many Chinese companies also.
The park has various clusters of business software, digital
entertainment, telecommunications, business process outsourcing
and back office service centres for providing support in domestic
and international software and services.
As a result of these efforts, within a span of five years, the
annual revenue from only software industry in the TSP has
increased from around US$3.2 billion in 2005 to around US$9.8
billion in 2009.
To attract investment and best of the talent, the corporate tax
rate for units operating in this software park is merely 15
percent - 10 percent lower than the general corporate tax rate in
China. "The rule applies to both domestic and international
companies," Thomas Tang, director of Chengdu High Tech zone, told
IANS.
The TSP falls within the Chengdu hi-tech zone. "Also there are
provisions for refund of the individual income tax paid by certain
categories of employees depending on their salaries," he added.
(Arun Anand can be contacted at arun.anand@ians.in)
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