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Report From China: Grooming The New Chinese Technologist

Last summer, the cold war between Google and Microsoft ignited when Google poached Kai-Fu Lee, a Microsoft executive in Redmond, to return to China to get its Beijing office off the ground. Microsoft sued Lee and Google, and the China talent war entered the industry's consciousness. Two years ago, supercomputer designer Steve Chen, who made his name at the old Cray Research, moved to China to design machines that would rank among the world's fastest.

The trend goes hand in hand with China's spike in R&D funding. Technologists who know Chinese language and culture and have special skills--say, 15 years in research management--"don't exist" here, says HP Labs senior program director Warren Greving, a Midwesterner who started the company's Bangalore, India lab, came to Beijing two years ago, and now has his eye on setting up a new company lab in Russia, "Today you may not be able to match them salary for salary," says Greving. "But you could convince them that there's more long-term career potential" in China than in the U.S.

That's the theory, anyway. HP's China Lab director Hsu Meichun says trying to hire Chinese nationals who've spent time in Silicon Valley has been an area of weakness. "There's a layer missing," she says. HP has sent American researchers over on temporary assignments. But Hsu wants someone with experience in a Western research lab who's willing to hang their shingle in China. "We haven't had a lot of luck," she says.

For more on Aaron Ricadela's trip to China, see:

Friendship, Peace, Cooperation, Development

Sliced Duck And Sharp Views With Reed Hundt

In Search Of The Chinese Cell-Phone/TV/Broadband Junkie

Second Home To Intel And AMD

And listen to this podcast: Special Report: Live From China

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