Chinese city Dalian to outdo Bangalore in near future

China's major information technology hub, Dalian City, is now pushing through with its efforts of becoming the leading IT center in Asia in the near future as it recently started a multi-million dollar subsidy as a way to promote software programs among college graduates, reports said.

Besides the annual subsidy of $44 million to attract graduates to study software programs and language skills, the northern city is also currently training over 70,000 university students, according to a report by The Hindu's online edition.

The city's chief Xia Deren was quoted by The Hindu as saying that Dalian is eying to level with or go beyond Bangalore in the next five to seven years.

However, Chinese software firm executives and IT experts deemed it unlikely that the city could reach as far as where Bangalore is in the coming years amid the continuing large gaps in the country's soft skills training.

Prakash Menon, who heads IT institution NIIT, said that producing 70,000 would not be a resolution to the problem. NIIT is an educator of IT skills to 50,000 Chinese annually in its 183 facilities. Chinese-based IT firms often have complaints on a big gap in terms of skills between work prerequisites and university graduates.

Companies also said that continuing inadequacies in the standard of training had caused the previous plans of the government to meet its target, particularly the one wherein a network of IT colleges was to be set up six years ago.

Xia said that in terms of enterprise competitiveness and human resources, Dalian still remains behind Bangalore although its environment and infrastructure are superior to the Silicon Valley of India. He added that the city considered learning from the experience of India in the development of its IT segment, referring to his 2000 visit in Bangalore.