The commission, which has a standing delegation in Silicon Valley, is reaching out to Chinese students studying there, with the hope of recruiting talent that has been exposed to Western software-development practices, Feng says. "Our engineers have strong individual capability but weak overall coordination capability," he says. One way to improve this, he says, is to give students in China's engineering schools internship opportunities to gain real-world experience.
While the government must work to create a sound environment for outsourcing, including infrastructure construction and tax advantages, China-based outsourcing companies also are working to attract business. Several software enterprises at Hi-Tech King World (a high-tech office zone in downtown Shanghai) established a small alliance for this purpose. And since Shanghai is a relatively costly place for business to operate, some outsourcing companies, including Shanghai Venus Software Co., have adopted a model in which Shanghai is "a window to attract outsourcing orders," Feng says, while the actual development work occurs in lower-cost cities. Says Feng, "Shanghai's software-outsourcing industry is just starting at a high speed and with a high potential."
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