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India greets Wen's idea with caution

Indian industry officials have reacted cautiously to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's (溫家寶) call for closer ties on information technology.

Wen, touring India's technology hub of Bangalore on Sunday, called for India and China to work together to launch the "Asian century" of information technology.

But legal issues, language and cultural barriers and Beijing's slant toward domestic firms were all hurdles to be overcome, Indian IT leaders said.

Subash Menon, chief executive of Subex Systems, an Indian telecom software firm with a sales office in Beijing, said the main question was whether the environment in China was conducive to doing business.

"Obviously the main issue is one of the legal structure. One is not sure at this point of time whether contracts with the Chinese firms will have legal protection. One has to watch how it evolves," Menon told reporters.

"Our main concern is to protect the intellectual property of our product. The Chinese law is not very clear on this. The other issue is that of language. There are not many English-speaking people out there," Menon said.

He said a majority of the Indian software firms were used to dealing with the Americans "who are very straightforward."

"The only cultural commonality between India and China is patience. There are substantial differences in cultural values which compounds the problem," he said.

Virendra Agarwal, director and senior vice-president of Satyam Computer Services, India's fourth-largest software exporter with three offices in China, echoed Menon's views and argued there was no synergy between India and China in technology.

"China is not a straightforward country say like Singapore when it comes to business. You cannot pull out money or transfer it easily. One has to put in some capital and a firm cannot open branch offices with ease," Agarwal said. "It is too regulated."

Agarwal said Chinese premier Wen's call to cooperate on software and hardware sectors did not add up.

"India has missed the hardware bus and there are no efforts to catch up on that front," he said. "We can source our hardware from any global market and China does not need our software skills as they have numerous programmers.
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