Cheng Sun / Chief Executive Officer
Perspectives from a life in leadership.
The latest essay
Chinese state enterprises are replacing foreign databases, operating systems and applications against fixed dates. The demand is real and the domestic products are improving, but a services firm that lets the date stand in for a test serves neither its client nor the products it installs.
Read the essayChinese state enterprises are replacing foreign databases, operating systems and applications against fixed dates. The demand is real and the domestic products are improving, but a services firm that lets the date stand in for a test serves neither its client nor the products it installs.
For three decades Dalian sold Japanese clients engineering time priced in yen per person-month. The yen's fall since 2021 and the arrival of AI-assisted coding have broken both halves of that unit. The honest replacement shares currency risk in writing and prices the work rather than the hours.
Japanese and European clients' questions about Chinese law and export controls are not prejudice to be argued away. A Chinese IT services firm working abroad should answer them with delivery design and plain speaking, and accept that some work should not be done in China.