2005年NPR美国国家公共电台十一月-Threat, and Promise, in China's Software（在线收听） |
| Anchor: This morning we continue our focus on the business of the US and China. We've been hearing for years that China worries American manufacturers of everything from T-shirts to auto parts. Chinese factories undercut their more expensive US competition. Now China is poised to do the same with intellectual work. More and more Chinese companies are starting to do advanced computer programming. NPR's Adam Davidson spent time with one man who says China will soon be a dominant player in the software industry. Adam Davidson: Eric Rongley has been carefully, steadily preparing for this moment for more than 12 years. He says he saw it all clearly in the early 1990s. Companies would stop using American programmers when they can get Chinese ones for a fraction of the price. And it's only now that his big bet is paying off. Eric Rongley: China is at about the point where India was at in 1994. The pioneers who figured out how to make things work, have figured it out and now the gates are open and people are gonna rush in. Adam Davidson: When he first envisioned China's bright future, Rongley was working for a laptop company in Taiwan; he says he was too young and too poor to become a computer hardware titan. He promised himself he'd be ready for what he was convinced would be the next big revolution to sweep through the global economy, the outsourcing of computer programming. Eric Rongley: I got to India right as that was getting ripe, and my plan was, I really liked China and Taiwan and their culture and what I wanted to do was learn what was going on in India, so that I could be first mover in China. Adam Davidson: Rongley stayed in India for 5 years. He hated the place, had a terrible time. But he worked in the industry and he learned what to do and what to avoid. So in 1999, he moved to Shanghai, and two years later he opened a software company. He calls it "Bleum", a made-up name that he says sounds good. His bet is paying off now. He says Bleum has done 20 million dollars in business and has 150 employees. Most of his clients are banks and credit card companies, like Capital One. Eric Rongley: The most important thing when you are getting 200,000 or 300,000 calls a day on an 800 number is, how long does each call take to finish. And Capital One is able to decrease the average call time one second on an average, they save 40 million dollars that year. One second. Adam Davidson: Rongley's Chinese coders are not creating new computer programs; they are just constantly testing computer systems that already exist and tweaking them. In the US, this work might be too expensive to do, but outsource it to China, and it suddenly makes sense. Eric Rongley: And so it is worth it for me to spend 10 million dollars to have guys just constantly tweaking the thing and trying to shave half a second here, a quarter second there. Adam Davidson: Rongley pays his Chinese programmers about 500 dollars a month. He says China graduates more than 150,000 programmers a year. The outsourcing industry is still tiny. Rongly says he only has about 4 or 5 real competitors, mostly companies run by Chinese people who have worked in the US IT industry. Many IT experts are less optimistic about China's prospects. They argue that the largest companies like Microsoft and IBM will use Chinese programmers for the local market and not for outsourcing. This means there is still far more supply than demand for programmers interested in the international market, so Rongley says he can pick the very best. Eric Rongley: The first step is an IQ test, and the minimum is 140 IQ, then after that they go into skills testing which is English and technical and then behavioral interviewing as well where we are looking for, to deselect certain characteristics and select for certain characteristics, so there what we are just hiring is bringing us with good personalities. Adam Davidson: Rongley says this dream team is not only cheaper than American programmers, they are better. They come to work eager. They work hard and well as a team. The only downside is that these programmers are still doing pretty dull stuff. But he thinks that will change one day. IT experts say that few Chinese programmers speak conversational English, the language of most IT clients, and that this is a huge road block. Rongley says he can solve that problem; there is a full time English teacher in the office, constantly running conversation practice sessions. "The reasons, yeah, maybe I will do it a visit…I will do it a visit for, yeah, for, to greater company, and, yeah…" Adam Davidson: It seems unlikely that Bleum staff will soon be offering telephone tech support, but that's OK. Rongley says his company's revenues are doubling every 10 months. He expects that growth rate to continue for a long time. Within a few years, China will likely have the second largest software industry in the world, surpassing India. Another problem in China is the legal environment. Intellectual property theft is common and then there is the corruption. Rongley says he faced a huge problem in his first year in business. Here is how he tells the story: one of his customers refused to pay his bill; instead, he called the police and told them Rongley was a US spy. Next thing he knows, the police have sealed the Bleum offices. Rongley snuck in one day and stole the computer that held all of his company's data. Eric Rongley: You know, one point I grabbed a server, and there, if you can, if you can picture, this is me, fat, bald, white guy running down the street being with two Chinese guys, hanging from me and a server in my hand, yelling "这个是我的，这个是我的", you know, "this is mine" in Chinese with, you know, 300 Chinese people around standing there, looking at this crazy guy running down the street. Adam Davidson: Rongley got away that day, and managed to stay in business. He says his plan is working. He got there first and he will be one of the biggest. He started off broke and in a few years, he plans to be a billionaire. Adam Davidson, NPR News. |
| 原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/NPR2005/40679.html |