If you can stand the advertisements, Forbes has a post, provocatively titled, “The Next Indochina War” by Sramana Mitra, a Silicon Valley based technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant. According to Ms. Mitra:

“China, so far the world’s manufacturing superpower, is making a credible play for a share of the IT outsourcing pie, much to India’s chagrin. China’s well-oiled machine, once it makes up its mind about rolling out a policy, is capable of doing so more effectively than most other governments.

Somehow, its communist past comes in handy: China has created an education system that is scaling well in the engineering disciplines. Statistically, the United States graduates roughly 70,000 undergraduate engineers annually. China graduates 600,000 and India 350,000. Although India compensates with an additional 300,000 IT graduates through non-engineering programs, in higher education, China is racing ahead, producing engineering Ph.D.s at a much faster pace than either the U.S. or India.

As India struggles to cope with raging attrition and salary inflation challenges, and a generally unstable, mercenary workforce, let’s take a look at the situation in China.”

The discussion includes a nice plug for VanceInfo (VIT). It also discusses the well-known opportunities for Chinese software outsourcing companies to grow by successfully serving their own domestic market. As some of the reader comments point out, there’s not much new ground covered in the post, but it’s good to see a thoughtful treatment of the issue from a source other than promotional material from Chinese outsourcing companies (including some junk that I’ve written over the years).

Anyway, it’s an interesting note, although I might wonder at Ms. Mitra’s conclusion that:

“…this competitive force from the Chinese contingent will whip India’s youth back into shape.”

Maybe it’s just that I’m an old guy, but I doubt that China’s growing dominance will really be a motivating factor for any group of young people beyond the country’s own borders.

Technorati Tags:  India, IndoChina, China, China Outsourcing