Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, hopes to become a software city in the near future, said the head of the National Software Industrial Base Dong Zhimin on Tuesday.

Dong Zhimin

Dong said a silicon valley "paradise" is now under construction in Hangzhou with more than 10,000 information technology (IT) talents and over 800 software companies. (According to an old Chinese saying, Hangzhou, together with Suzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province, is a "paradise on earth.")

Dong explained that any city with 1,000 software companies can be called a software city; Hangzhou is aiming for this title - silicon valley paradise.

A series of favorable policies released by the city government have attracted a large number of investors to Hangzhou, including overseas Chinese companies and multinationals like Nokia, Motorola and Sumsung.

Moreover, the software base is also an ideal venue for overseas Chinese students who want to start up their own businesses.

Hung Yung Lai

In the past five years, the total software base revenue jumped nearly 10 fold from 500 million yuan to 4.85 billion yuan.

The rapid development of the software industry has helped the city of Hangzhou shift its industry pillar from silk and textiles to high technology.

Among the 25 listed companies in Hangzhou, six are software companies, Dong said, and 10 of China's top 100 software firms are from Hangzhou.

Among the software companies in Hangzhou, Sing Lee Software Co Ltd, a developer and provider of IT and other services for China's financial industry, is a good example.

Engineers of Sing Lee are at work.

Hung Yung Lai, chairman and president of Sing Lee, said two factors inspired him to invest in Hangzhou in 1992: he felt China should have every advantage other countries enjoy and he believed Shanghai would be another high-tech center in China. As Shanghai's "backyard," Hangzhou enjoys great regional advantages.

Hung used the word "successful" to describe his company's performance over the past 12 years. In 1993, the first software securities self-service-trust exchange system emerged at Sing Lee, changing Chinese securities from a hand-operated trust to the self-service trust exchange. Later, Sing Lee turned out a POS sharing system without a core mode that realized the first multi-line POS without central communications in China.

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