April 2005 - Vol. 48 No. 4

In the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte predicted "When China awakens, it will astonish the world." China's recent stirring from its centuries-old slumber has far-reaching implications for international business and politics, as well as for science and technology development.For much of the last two millennia, China was one of the world's greatest economies and most technologically advanced societies. In recent centuries, however, the Middle Kingdom stagnated as other parts of the world experienced the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the emergence of computer-based IT. Since paramount leader Deng Xiaoping opened China's door to the outside world in 1979, an infusion of market economics, foreign capital, and modern technology has been restoring its historical prominence [8]. From a global perspective, the country has gone from near irrelevance during the 1960s to being quaint, exotic, and inscrutable before emerging as a heavyweight. The Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 will celebrate the country's latest rise and represent an important milestone in its transformation from isolated Maoist state to full-fledged member of the international community.

China has embraced the Internet. As of December 2004, 94 million people had gone online, making China the second largest Internet-user market in the world, behind only the U.S., according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which has carried out 15 semiannual surveys of Internet users in China since 1997.1The growth trajectory of the country's Internet use appears to follow the common S-curve of technology adoption seen around the world (see Figure 1). The collapse of the worldwide Internet bubble in 2000 and 2001 slowed diffusion only momentarily. The rate of growth accelerated again in 2002 and 2003, driven by a few leading applications, including online chat, online games, and the Web-based short message service (SMS).

The Internet is increasingly indispensable to national economies worldwide. Here, we focus on the Internet diffusion process in Chinese businesses and its link to the general growth of IT spending throughout the Chinese economy. Our results are based on our 10-year investigation of IT adoption in Chinese companies and industry-specific patterns of Internet diffusion and related IT spending growth. IT applications in China were introduced relatively late in Internet evolution compared to those in the developed countries, forcing business managers to contend with a lack of experience, know-how, and infrastructure. This late start has also meant that Chinese companies are able to choose from relatively more advanced technologies, learn from the experience of others, and be less bothered by the problems associated with legacy systems. In addition, because China generally uses IT differently from other countries, it is worth investigating the process through which Chinese companies adopt new technology, as well as any patterns that have emerged within it, so as to better understand how IT affects the overall Chinese economy.

Charles Zhang is founder, chairman, and chief executive of Sohu.com, a company incorporated in the U.S. state of Delaware with headquarters in Beijing. In 2004, Sohu took in more than $100 million (U.S.) in revenue by providing online information and services. Zhang established the company in 1996 as Internet Technologies China and two years later launched the first Chinese-language search engine Sohu, or "search fox." Sohu.com was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange in July 2000; its market capitalization topped $1.4 billion in 2003 before declining in 2004.Zhang pioneered the Silicon Valley model of entrepreneurship in mainland China and is often referred to as China's Bill Gates. In 1998, Time Digital named him one of the world's Top 50 Digital Elite, and the World Economic Forum identified him as a Global Leader of Tomorrow. In 2003, he was featured in Time magazine as one of its 15 Global Tech Gurus, and in BusinessWeek as one of 25 global e-business CEOs. In 2004, he was selected the Distinguished Executive of the Year by the (U.S.) Academy of Management. He spoke with me during and after the 64th Annual Meetings of the (U.S.) Academy of Management in New Orleans, August 2004.

Western China is a vast area of just over four million square kilometers traditionally associated with the historic Silk Road connecting traders, manufacturers, and consumers in Europe and Asia. But for the past few hundred years, the Silk Road has largely been forgotten. Today, however, China's opening to the outside world and general trend toward technological modernization is starting to be felt in these far-western regions. The emergence of e-commerce in coastal China is well-documented [7]. Here, we report on the technological changes taking place in Western China, assessing the prospects for its economic and social development ahead. We focus on what we term the e-transformation of the Tibetan (Xizang), Xinjiang Uygur, and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions and Qinghai and Gansu provinces (see the Figure). These areas cover 43% of the land mass of China, yet include only 4% of the country's overall population of more than 1.3 billion.

A 2004 report by consulting firm Gartner Dataquest forecasts that the worldwide market for IT services will top $762.3 billion in 2008, up from $608.1 billion in 2004. The Asia-Pacific region's compound annual growth rate of 9.7% (projected 2003--2008) leads the world. IT services revenue in the region will thus top $43.9 billion in 2008, as China surpasses South Korea to become one of the three largest IT services markets in the region, along with Japan and Australia.The growth of China's enterprise software market in 2003--2004 reflected this broader trend. Sales of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, according to a 2004 China Computer World (CCW) research survey, totaled 1.19 billion yuan ($144 million U.S.) in the first half of 2004, up 29% over the same period a year earlier. Human resources software posted sales growth of 80.4% for the first half of 2004 over the same period a year earlier. On the other hand, customer relationship management software sales barely crossed the 200-million-yuan mark, up 2.2% over the same period a year earlier. Nonetheless, the CCW survey anticipated a customer relationship software boom in five years when Chinese companies have had enough time to digest their operational-level IT investments and move on to more sophisticated management software. Despite the mixed outcomes in terms of ERP implementation and use in China [4], the CCW survey found that 47% of Chinese enterprises had installed ERP modules, with an annual growth rate of 5% for new installations.

China's high-priority effort to become a more knowledge-based economy and society means that knowledge management (KM) is increasingly important. For example, the timely transfer and use of business knowledge can provide a competitive advantage in practically any given industry. Despite its enormous promise in business and science, effective KM also faces formidable obstacles. Here, we explore the most notable ones in the China context.We have used surveys, interviews, focus groups, longitudinal case studies, and anecdotal information for more than a decade to develop an understanding of how knowledge is managed in China and its role in the country's drive for global competitiveness. KM in China is distinctive, constrained somewhat by technological limitations, but influenced more significantly by psychological factors (such as cultural values) among groups and social levels. Here, we describe the distinctive aspects of knowledge generation, documentation, transfer, and use that prevail in China today, highlighting the key factors influencing Chinese KM.

Technostress has been defined as any negative effect on human attitudes, thoughts, behavior, and psychology that directly or indirectly results from technology [8]. With the recent widespread application of IT and the Internet throughout China, technostress has become a serious issue for both users and IT professionals due to its potential effect on users' mental health and on-the-job productivity. Chinese employees are surrounded, often overwhelmed, by modern technology. The top 100 largest Chinese enterprises, accounting for 25% of China's GDP, are investing heavily ($10--$15 billion annually) in new IT applications, including enterprise resource planning systems. A 2002 report by the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry stated that there are 380 million mobile phone subscribers in China, making the country the world's largest mobile phone market. And a survey conducted in 2004 by the China Internet Network Information Center found that 87 million Chinese frequently accessed the Internet in 2004, an increase of 19 million, or 27.9%, over 2003.