High Tech in China

Tang Tingao is apologetic as he guides a visitor through his lab at Fudan University in Shanghai. This is one of China's top institutions, and as head of Fudan's microelectronics institute, the 63-year-old Tang oversees some of the most advanced semiconductor research in the country. But by global standards, the conditions are primitive. The embarrassed scientist points to a row of old made-in-China furnaces for silicon preparation. In any other country, they would be obsolete.

Well, they will soon be passé in Shanghai, too. Despite a global technology slump, this city is in the middle of a high-tech spending binge. Government-linked Chinese companies and foreign multinationals are lavishing billions of dollars on new facilities. Chinese chip plants are mushrooming in a new science park just across the Huangpu River from the Fudan campus. In return for a toehold in the Chinese market, foreign companies are helping Tang upgrade the equipment in his institute and train his staff. Such assistance could one day help Fudan become a semiconductor research hub for Shanghai, Tang says--"just like Stanford or Berkeley in Silicon Valley."