Deng Xiaoping once said, "Science and technology is the primary productive force." Guided by this principle, the Chinese government and business sector have attached great importance to research and development initiatives. In turn, this has had a major impact in promoting China's social progress as well as in improving quality of life for China's people. Investment in R&D from the government, industry, and university sectors is growing significantly from year to year. However, the present investment is still inadequate to meet the growing demands of development in China.

To put it succinctly, there is great interest and effort going into transforming "Made in China" into "Created in China." The Chinese people want to be seen as important generators of new product ideas. The fact that more and more foreign enterprises are entering the Chinese market will act as a catalyst and speed up the process of the globalization of China's economy. In this process, both Chinese and foreign enterprises will win together.

Of course, China's technological maturation provides attractive opportunities for foreign investment, evidenced by the fact that most of the best-known global enterprises—such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and EMC—have established research organizations in China. While some of these organizations are focused on product localization, others are performing basic research here. As China becomes more developed technologically, the environment for foreign research organizations will improve and the number of new research institutions being launched in China will rapidly increase.

Obviously, that is a good thing for China. However, the increasing number of foreign enterprises here has also intensified the competition for talent. Generally speaking, foreign companies are prevailing in the acquisition of talent because they can offer higher salaries. Yet China is a country with a large population, and the number of students in its universities ranks first in the world. While a large talent pool is important, the quality of that pool cannot be neglected. I think that China should put more emphasis on the quality of personnel training in order to cultivate enough desirable talents for the society. I also believe that foreign companies in China are a very good incubator for improving the quality of talent.

Protection of intellectual property

With the development of new technologies comes the need for stringent intellectual property rights and software copyrights. China is a developing country where some problems surrounding intellectual property rights and software copyrights still exist. The issue of protecting software copyrights is so important it could threaten the growth and development of China's software industry. Because of this, the Chinese government has enacted new laws to protect software copyrights of developers.

I believe we must adopt not only legal but also educational and technological means to protect intellectual property. At present, my team is developing a software copyright protection system based on trusted computing technologies. This project is supported by the Chinese government.

Information security R&D

Trusted computing not only requires complete information security in a single location but also the ability for multiple people to access and manipulate information "in the cloud" with every participant and the information itself protected. We are involved in a multiparty research collaboration called the Daoli Trusted Infrastructure Project that seeks to addresses the challenges of trust and security in online collaborations between local and remote parties.

In cloud computing, with numerous resource providers and consumers, traditional coarse-grained yes/no data security policies are not suitable. We believe that a critical requirement to strengthening security is to add behavior conformity—an assurance that participants will conform to the rules and policies of the virtual collaboration. A trusted computing platform, therefore, is a combination of a technological environment in concert with secure behavior. Although the solutions of the Daoli Project are just a proof of concept today, these innovations come from a real requirement of developing cloud computing, which I feel will be increasingly important to global enterprises.

Through the collaboration with Chinese enterprise, we have developed the first trusted computer and trusted platform module in China. Supported by China's national high-tech development 863 Program, we have also developed the first trusted PDA and software system for testing and evaluating of trusted computing in China. Based on this R&D, we are participating in the establishment of trusted computing technology standards in China.

Prospects for the future

The Chinese government is aligned with industry and universities in understanding the importance of building China's competencies and capacity with respect to scientific and technological R&D. Internal and foreign investment is growing, our universities are producing valuable information engineers and workers, and our profile in the global economy is rising. China's prospects for the future in this area are very hopeful and strong.

At the same time, the strengthening of information security laws, technologies, and practices is essential to maintaining and building on the progress we have made to date. This takes work, commitment, and funding, which China has demonstrated its willingness to do. With all these activities undertaken together, China will soon stand with other technologically advanced nations as a leader in the global information-based economy.