China IT park looking to keep Japanese firms

Dalian-The management of Dalian Software Park Co. (DLSP) wants it known that despite the recent ill-will in China towards Japan, the industrial zone, and its city of Dalian, remains a good place for Japanese information technology companies to do software development and business process outsourcing.

To this end, a delegation from DLSP will visit Japan at the end of November to meet with Japanese companies that have already moved to the park and to encourage other companies to continue to follow suit.

Japan's nationalization of the Senkaku Islands in September sparked anti-Japanese sentiment across China and has generally disrupted efforts to attract more Japanese companies to China.

But DSLP does not want to lose the momentum it has gained to date, hence the active promotion of itself to Japnese companies.

"We want to convey the message that even when anti-Japan rallies were staged across China, the business of the Japanese companies here was not interrupted," said DLSP Vice President Tian Feng.

DLSP is sending a group of managers to Japan to explain the situation in Dalian to companies that are tenants at the park. That should help fill the information vacuum, since business trips between China and Japan have dropped because of the anti-Japan protests.

The delegation also intends to hold presentations for Japanese companies that have an interest in doing business in China.

The company that operates DlSP was established by a local real estate company to build and manage office buildings, industrial facilities and residences on a site of 3 sq. kilometers developed by the city of Dalian.

DLSP currently has some 400 tenant companies, most of which are involved in software development or business process outsourcing. Around a quarter of those tenants are Japanese companies, and 80% are companies that do business directed toward Japan.

Dalian has strong ties to Japan, and business related to IT and to outsourcing is thriving. Nissan Motor Co. is currently building a factory there and Japanese companies as a whole account for 30% of all foreign affiliated companies in the city.

When anti-Japan protests spread in major cities in China in September, things were close to normal in Dalian.

"The IT sector in Dalian, and the business process outsourcing field in particular, has an inter-dependent relationship with Japan," stressed DLSP's Tian.

If there was any trouble with call centers and business processing, the impact would be immediate and Japanese companies would bring their operations back home. If even one company were to pull up stakes, it could throw 1,000 people out o work, and that possibility is a worry to the city.

Resource：The Nikkei Weekly