From: raju@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Daryanani)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.hongkong
Subject: Re: Electronics/videogame stores in Hong Kong. (SUMMARY)
Keywords: HongKong has little exciting software engineering stuff...
Date: 31 Jul 92 09:55:27 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London

In <1992Jul25.002241.41114@enlil.premenos.sf.ca.us> cho@enlil.premenos.sf.ca.us (Cho-Ming Tai) writes:


>       I went to Hong Kong last Christmas and found the computers/machines
>       sold at Golden Plaza (in Kowloon) disappointing.
>       They were all PC stuff.  It's hard even to find any high-end Macs,
>       not mentioning Sun, Next, DEC stuff.

When you consider the difference in pricing it's not
surprising.  While a 486 with a VGA and 100MB+ disk now costs
less than US$2000, you won't be able to buy any workstations
for less than US$5000.  Seeing that SSP mostly sells into the
home computer market, how many Sparcs do you think they would
be able to sell?

>  Most CS magazines in Hong Kong
>       copy/translate articles/ideas from foreign ones.

I don't know about the Chinese mags, but the English ones are
purely newsmagazines & don't print technical articles.  Also
their market is too small for them to really put a lot of
money into technical articles.

>       I've been told by my old high schoolmates that engineers are not
>       respected or equally rewarded as Accountants in Hong Kong...

I suppose it's a question of demand and supply.  There is more
demand for accountants because HK is becoming more & more a
financial centre, with manufactuing moving out.  Anyway, HK
never was a base for high-tech manufacturing, and even the one
PC motherboard manufacturer (Informtech) moved it's production
lines to Thailand last year.

>       Most programming jobs in Hong Kong are for Application Programmers
>       who code around RDBMS packages (mostly Oracle on PC or Mainframe;
>       Sybase was not there yet) to implement BUSINESS computer software
>       systems.  A brother of my old classmate got a MSCS (specializing
>       in AI) from U.K. can only find a mainframe banking programming job
>       in Hong Kong.  I wonder if there is ANY SOFTWARE COMPANY in
>       Hong Kong, besides financial institutions, that employs programmers.

That's why I'd rather not work there, coz there's such a
limited range of activities.

>       I think Hong Kong is slow and reluctant to catch up with others in
>       Hi-Tech areas.  The government does not put enough money in
>       encouraging industrial R&D, post-graduate research, etc.

This certainly is a problem.  The gov't. has been very
short-sighted for a long time, but then the decisions it makes
are driven by big business.  HK businessmen were reluctant to
make a commitment to go high-tech because it was easier for
them to just move their manufacturing base into China when HK
got too expensive.  Now it's becoming mainly a financial centre
& could start to perform the same role towards China as New
York does towards the US, i.e., the main financial centre.  I
don't think NY has much of an industrial base, but it's
probably the richest state in the US anyway.

>       If this trend continues, Hong Kong will be full of BUSINESS people
>       while Japan, Taiwan and Singapore dominate the ASIAN HI-TECH AREA.
>       Well, I think it's OK for a country to specialize; however, isn't
>       it better for Hong Kong to diversify its interests and growth
>       opportunities ???

Is it really so bad?  OK, HK does run the risk of losing it's
industrial base, but I wonder how many companies in HK can
really compete against those in Japan & the West in their own
markets.  When you consider that all those European giants have
basically lost the battle against Japan and the US, do you
think tiny HK can compete.  Singapore is mainly a manufacturing
base for US/Japanese companies.  ALR is about the only
Singaporean computer company I can think of, & even they do
their R&D in California.  Taiwan is also mainly just a
manufacturing base, & I don't think PC motherboards are that
high-tech.

I think if HK does want to compete it's going to need a huge
investment in training it's people, & you end up with the
chicken & egg situation in that if you can't bring in the
companies without a pool of talent and can't produce a pool of
scientific talent when there are so many better paying jobs
already available.  I think the HKUST is the first step in the
(right) direction, & it should be interesting to see how
successful it is.

Raju
--
Raju M. Daryanani
raju@dcs.qmw.ac.uk