A couple of days ago, international giant IBM went to XiAn JiaoTong University to participate in "University Technology Day", held by the university. The student representatives of IBM's Extreme Blue™ program (a genius incubator program) presented their results of innovative research. The example of IBM proves that international high-tech companies have started a battle to win over the high-tech professionals in the mainland.

Besides IBM, international companies like Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco are seeking the excellent IT professional from Mainland China. Even software companies from India have started to look at the IT professional of China. With the trend of IT companies moving to Mainland China, companies from Taiwan have also joined with other international companies to compete for the IT professionals of mainland China.

The IBM Extreme Blue program has been carried in many developing countries. According to Program Director Mary Keough, IBM organizes the top students from computer science and MBA together with the best employees of IBM, to provide the students with the best technologies and development tools. The purpose of the program is to create the most cutting-edge technologies and business opportunities for IBM.

On July 15, 2002, elite students from Beijing University, TsingHua (QinHua) University, Beijing Post and Communications University, Shanghai JiaoTong University, FuDan University, and Nanjing Polytechnic Institute went to the research center of IBM in China to start the Extreme Blue program.

Mary Keough said, "Compared with the students of United States and Europe, Chinese students are at least as good as them, or even better." According to her, this is the first time that IBM has held the program in Asia Pacific, and the excellent outcome will result in continuing the program for the long term.

The results of the incubator program have been applied for IT intellectual properties, and have been successfully applied into IBM business. The main purpose of the program is to recruit the best in China. Furthermore, it will be a way of recruiting new employees into IBM.

People in the IT cycle have said that the number of IT professionals needed in China is about half a million. There are only around 50,000 students that graduate each year, which is only one-tenth of the need. Due to half of the IT professionals choosing to go to abroad or to join international companies, the lack of IT professionals has become a bottleneck for the development IT industry in mainland China. There is structural unbalance in the IT industry for China. China lacks not only high level IT professional managers and high level IT professionals, more seriously it lacks people who do fundamental computer science research and professionals who can add exciting techniques to traditional industries. China also lacks the people who can transfer the R&D results into products and also professional software engineers.