The rise of China's techies.

• Author: Friedman, Thomas L.
• Position: Opinion - Brief Article - Excerpt

Workers aren't just making tennis shoes in Dalian, one of the Chinese cities that are grabbing business as knowledge centers as well as manufacturing hubs. It has become a center for outsourcing by Japanese companies that want to tap China's low-cost brainpower. GE, Microsoft, and Sony are setting up operations, and young Chinese are working as data-entry technicians, call-center operators, and programmers to get onto the first rung of the high-tech ladder. For China to advance from basic software outsourcing to design, says a Chinese science planner, "we have to build more products from our own intellectual property," which will require improving the innovative capability of the younger...