纽约时报：美国的高科技人才如今正在往中国跑(图)
From Xian, China... The New York Times March 17, 2010
March, The, Times, From, Xian
The New York Times
March 17, 2010
China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S.
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/business/global/18research.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1268885224-CtWjmny95XE1BwnFP+71Gg
XIAN, China — For years, many of China’s best and brightest left for the United States, where high-tech industry was more cutting-edge. But Mark R. Pinto is moving in the opposite direction.
Mr. Pinto is the first chief technology officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays.
In addition to moving Mr. Pinto and his family to Beijing in January, Applied Materials, whose headquarters are in Santa Clara, Calif., has just built its newest and largest research labs here. Last week, it even held its annual shareholders’ meeting in Xian.
It is hardly alone. Companies — and their engineers — are being drawn here more and more as China develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States.
A few American companies are even making deals with Chinese companies to license Chinese technology.
The Chinese market is surging for electricity, cars and much more, and companies are concluding that their researchers need to be close to factories and consumers alike. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs here after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world’s solar panels by the end of this year.
“We’re obviously not giving up on the U.S.,” Mr. Pinto said. “China needs more electricity. It’s as simple as that.”
China has become the world’s largest auto market, and General Motors has a large and growing auto research center in Shanghai.
The country is also the biggest market for desktop computers and has the most Internet users. Intel has opened research labs in Beijing for semiconductors and server networks.
Not just drawn by China’s markets, Western companies are also attracted to China’s huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers — and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies.
Now, Mr. Pinto said, researchers from the United States and Europe have to be ready to move to China if they want to do cutting-edge work on solar manufacturing because the new Applied Materials complex here is the only research center that can fit an entire solar panel assembly line.
“If you really want to have an impact on this field, this is just such a tremendous laboratory,” he said.
Xian — a city about 600 miles southwest of Beijing known for the discovery nearby of 2,200-year-old terra cotta warriors — has 47 universities and other institutions of higher learning, churning out engineers with master’s degrees who can be hired for $730 a month.
On the other side of Xian from Applied Materials sits Thermal Power Research Institute, China’s world-leading laboratory on cleaner coal. The company has just licensed its latest design to Future Fuels in the United States.
The American company plans to pay about $100 million to import from China a 130-foot-high maze of equipment that turns coal into a gas before burning it. This method reduces toxic pollution and makes it easier to capture and sequester gases like carbon dioxide under ground.
Future Fuels will ship the equipment to Pennsylvania and have Chinese engineers teach American workers how to assemble and operate it.
Small clean-energy companies are headed to China, too.
NatCore Technology of Red Bank, N.J., recently discovered a way to make solar panels much thinner, reducing the energy and toxic materials required to manufacture them. American companies did not even come look at the technology, so NatCore reached a deal with a consortium of Chinese companies to finish developing its invention and mass-produce it in Changsha, China.
“These other countries — China, Taiwan, Brazil — were all over us,” said Chuck Provini, the company’s chief executive.
President Obama has often spoken about creating clean-energy jobs in the United States. But China has shown the political will to do so, said Mr. Pinto, 49, who is also Applied Materials’ executive vice president for solar systems and flat-panel displays.
Locally, the Xian city government sold a 75-year land lease to Applied Materials at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex’s operating costs for five years, said Gang Zou, the site’s general manager.
The two labs, the first of their kind anywhere in the world, are each bigger than two American football fields. Applied Materials continues to develop the electronic guts of its complex machines at laboratories in the United States and Europe. But putting all the machines together and figuring out processes to make them work in unison will be done in Xian. The two labs, one on top of the other, will become operational once they are fully outfitted late this year.
Applied Materials has built a 360-employee operation here in Xian after announcing an 18-month program last year to reduce employment by 10 to 12 percent, or 1,300 to 1,500 jobs, including layoffs in the United States and Europe. Mr. Pinto said that the company was readjusting its work force as manufacturing shifted to Asia, but that the Xian facility involved a new approach to researching the design of an entire assembly line and was not replacing laboratories elsewhere.
Mr. Pinto is a well-known figure in Silicon Valley in his own right. While still a doctoral student at Stanford in the early 1980s, he wrote the first widely used two-dimensional computer simulation of how semiconductors work. This allowed engineers to test each one on a computer before building prototypes, shortening the semiconductor development process.
Later, he became a celebrated researcher at Bell Labs.
With China’s economy gaining strength, Mr. Pinto and his wife, then living in Santa Clara, began insisting in 2005 that their sons study Chinese once a week.
Now 10 and 11, the boys are improving their Chinese and mastering the art of eating with chopsticks.
Applied Materials has greater challenges, including fighting technological theft, a chronic problem in China.
The company has taken measures, including sealing its computers’ ports here, to prevent the easy use of flash drives to record data. Employees are not allowed to take computers from the building without special permission, and an elaborate system of computer passwords and electronic door keys limits access to certain technological secrets.
But none of that changes the sense that tectonic shifts are under way.
When Xei Lina, a 26-year-old Applied Materials engineer here, was asked recently whether China would play a big role in clean energy in the future, she was surprised by the question.
“Most of the graduate students in China are chasing this area,” she said. “Of course, China will lead everything.”
纽约时报：美国的高科技人才如今正在往中国跑(from Xi'An)
新闻来源: 纽约时报 于March 19, 2010 08:32:32 敬请注意:新闻取自各大新闻媒体，观点内容并不代表本网立场！
www.6park.com
美国《纽约时报》网络版今天撰文称，随着中国经济的快速崛起以及新能源等高科技行业的高速发展，美国的研究型企业和人才开始逐渐向中国转移。 www.6park.com
以下为文章全文： www.6park.com
多年以来，中国许多最为优秀的人才都纷纷前往美国，那里的高科技行业位居全球前沿。但马克·平托(Mark R. Pinto)却选择了截然相反的道路。 www.6park.com
平托是第一个迁往中国的美国主要科技公司的CTO。他所在的应用材料公司(Applied Materials)是硅谷最为著名的企业之一。该公司提供的设备完善了全球第一批电脑芯片。如今，应用材料公司已经成为全球最大的半导体、太阳能电池板和平板电视生产设备供应商。 www.6park.com
除了让平托举家迁往北京以外，总部位于加州圣克拉拉市的应用材料公司还刚刚在中国建立了该公司最新也是规模最大的研究实验室。上周，该公司甚至在陕西西安召开了一年一度的股东大会。 www.6park.com
无独有偶，随着中国逐渐开始发展高科技经济，直接挑战美国，已经开始有越来越多的企业和工程师被吸引到中国。还有几家美国公司甚至与中国企业达成协议，使用中国的技术。 www.6park.com
中国市场的电力、汽车等许多行业都在蓬勃发展，而很多企业都认为，有必要将研发人员派到距离工厂和用户更近的地方。应用材料预计，到今年底，全球太阳能电池板产量将有三分之二来自中国，因此该公司将最新的几座太阳能研究实验室都建在中国。 www.6park.com
平托说：“我们肯定不会放弃美国市场，但中国需要更多的电力，就这么简单。” www.6park.com
中国已经成为全球第一大汽车市场，通用汽车在上海建立了一个规模庞大而且还在不断扩张的汽车研究中心。中国还是全球桌面电脑的最大消费国，网民数量也位居全球第一。英特尔在北京开设了一个研究实验室，专门用于研发半导体和服务器网络。 www.6park.com
除了庞大的市场以外，吸引西方企业的还有中国巨大的廉价高级工程师储备，以及中国许多城市和地区所提供的补贴，其中以绿色能源企业最为突出。 www.6park.com
平托表示，欧美国家的研究人员如果想要从事太阳能生产领域的尖端工作，就要做好前往中国的准备，这是因为应用材料公司在中国最新建设的园区是全球唯一一个能够安装完整的太阳能电池板组装线的研究中心。他说：“如果你真的想要在这一领域产生影响，这里正是这样一个了不起的实验室。” www.6park.com
有着2200年历史的古都西安拥有47所大学和研究机构，这里有很多获得硕士学位的人，他们每月的工资却仅为730美元。 www.6park.com
西安还拥有西安热工研究院有限公司，这是一所拥有世界领先技术的清洁煤研究机构。该公司刚刚把其最新的设计授权给美国未来燃料公司(Future Fuels)使用。 www.6park.com
未来燃料公司计划斥资1亿美元，从中国引进130英尺(约合39.6米)高的曲折设备，将煤转换成燃气，然后再燃烧利用。这一技术可以降低有毒污染物的排放，并能简化二氧化碳等气体的捕捉和隔离过程。未来燃料公司将把这台设备运到美国宾夕法尼亚州，并聘请中国工程师教美国工人如何组装和使用。 www.6park.com
小型的清洁能源公司也开始向中国市场拓展。位于美国新泽西州雷德班克市(Red Bank)的NatCore Technology就计划探索一种方法，生产超薄太阳能电池板，从而降低生产过程中所消耗的能量和有毒原料。美国企业尚未开始研究这一技术，因此 NatCore便与一个由中国企业组成的财团达成协议，在中国长沙完成这一发明的开发和大规模生产。 www.6park.com
NatCore公司CEO查克·普罗维尼(Chuck Provini)说：“中国大陆、中国台湾和巴西等国家和地区已经全面超越我们。” www.6park.com
美国总统奥巴马经常提到，要在美国创造清洁能源岗位。但平托表示，中国的政策也是如此。平托今年49岁，他还兼任应用材料公司太阳能系统和平板显示器业务执行副总裁。 www.6park.com
应用材料公司西安分公司总经理邹钢表示，西安市政府向应用材料公司出售了75年的土地使用权，不仅价格非常低，而且还报销了该公司西安实验中心5年运营成本的四分之一。 www.6park.com
这两个实验室在全球范围内都首屈一指，每个实验室的占地面积都超过两个美式橄榄球场。应用材料公司仍然在欧美国家生产复杂设备的核心部件，但所有的设备组装过程都是在西安完成的。除此之外，西安公司还负责研究各个部件之间的协调性。等到今年年底设备到齐后，这两个实验室就将投入运营。 www.6park.com
应用材料公司去年宣布了一项为期18个月的裁员计划，将在全球裁员10%至12%，涉及人数约为1300至1500人，欧美国家也包括在内。但自那以后，该公司却已经在西安建立起了360人的运营团队。平托表示，随着生产向亚洲转移，该公司正在对员工结构进行调整，但西安研究中心负责一个全新的项目：研究整套组装线的设计工作。这是其他地方的实验室无法替代的。 www.6park.com
平托凭借自己的能力在硅谷获得了相当高的声誉。上世纪80年代初，当他还在斯坦福大学读博士时，便编写了首款被广泛使用的二维计算机模拟器，可以模拟半导体的工作流程。借助这个模拟器，工程师在创建原型产品前就可以在电脑上进行测试，从而缩短了半导体产品的开发过程。不久后，他又成为了贝尔实验室的著名研究员。 www.6park.com
随着中国经济开始走强，虽然当时仍然住在加州，但平托和他的妻子从2005年开始便要求他们的孩子每周学习一次中文。如今，这两个男孩已经分别长到 10岁和11岁了，他们的中文水平正在逐渐提高，使用筷子的技巧也大有长进。 www.6park.com
应用材料公司同样也面临着不小的挑战，包括打击技术盗窃，这是中国市场的一个长期问题。该公司已经采取了一系列措施，包括封闭中国分公司的电脑接口，避免使用优盘轻易拷贝数据。没有特别允许，员工不能从办公楼中携带电脑外出，他们还创建了一套复杂的电脑密码和电子门禁系统，限制对某些技术机密的访问。但这一切都没有改变他们的看法：整个行业的中心的确在向中国转移。 www.6park.com
当我们向应用材料公司26岁的工程师谢丽娜(Xei Lina，音译)问道：中国是否会在未来的清洁能源领域占据重要地位时，他对这个问题感到很惊讶。她说：“多数中国毕业生都在追逐这一领域。当然，中国将引领一切。”
Friday, March 19, 2010
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