I attended an interesting event this week.  The China Wuxi (Silicon Valley) Symposium on Software and Outsourcing was organized by representatives from Wuxi, China, in conjunction with CSPA, SDForum, and Global Sourcing Alliance.  Prior to the meeting, I didn’t know much about Wuxi, especially as a software outsourcing destination.  After listening to the presentations, I’m left thinking that I missed the boat on this one.

The folks from Wuxi did a great job of presenting their city and describing the benefits of locating operations there.  This was in stark contrast to some of the meetings with regional delegations that I’ve been subjected to.  I was at one meeting a few years ago where the whole presentation was a video of a regional fly-over (so fast you almost couldn’t follow it) set to music so loud that it nearly made my ears bleed.  The “speaker” didn’t say a single word.  He just stood there while the video played.  The representatives that put on the Wuxi event were completely at the opposite end of the spectrum.  They really did a good job.

Anyway, here are a few bits that I picked up about Wuxi:

• Wuxi is about 90 minutes from Shanghai/Pudong International Airport (one speaker suggested that it takes about as long to get to Wuxi from the airport as it does to get to Santa Clara from San Francisco International Airport — perhaps when the traffic is really nasty on 101…).
• U.S. companies have set up 854 projects in Wuxi, with US$3.22B of committed capital investments.
• The U.S. is Wuxi’s largest export market and its third largest source of imports.
• During 2007, over 21,000 companies in Wuxi traded with the U.S.  This represented a total trade volume of US$7.02B and was a 34.6% increase over the previous year.
• Per-capita income in Wuxi is US$9K.
• The area is approved to create the “Wuxi Taihu Protection Zone — China’s Service Outsourcing Demonstration Zone” and is committed to establishing a software / IT outsourcing industry in the the zone.
• The region’s population is approximately 4.6B.
• Wuxi was ranked as the #4 “Best Business City in China” by Forbes for 2007.
• The area currently has an objective of employing 200K people in their outsourcing service industry by 2010.
• Universities and training institutes produce nearly 200K graduates per year within commuting distance (I suspect that they include Shanghai in this), so the resource base is strong and growing fast.
• They offer significant incentives to outsourcing companies that help achieve this employment goal.
• They’ve established multiple software & science parks to house the new industry.

In my humble opinion, Wuxi is a natural expansion area, especially if your primary resource base is in Shanghai.  You should pressure your vendors to take a look at the region.

Technorati Tags:  China, China Outsourcing