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March 30, 2007 Vol. 77,
no. 10S
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| A BLUR OF CHANGE: EECS Ph.D. student Jing Yang in Shanghai during a recent tour of China’s growth.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JING JANG
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EECS grad student peers into her country’s future on MOT-China trip
On January 2, EECS Ph.D. student Jing Yang found herself
in Tiananmen Square, taking in views of the impressive public square
and surrounding historic district with eight other Berkeley graduate
students. That night the group sampled Beijing duck at the city’s
famous Quanjude Restaurant, before walking the Great Wall the next
day. But on January 4, the sight-seeing ended, and the students got
down to business.
Over the next two weeks, the group visited five cities where new companies
are churning out everything from Internet search engines to solar technologies.
They interviewed dozens of executives, university professors and government
officials to find out how they’re evolving in the face of rapid
economic development. “China is developing so quickly that we
all want to know what it will look like in 10 to 15 years,” says
Yang.
The January tour was the dénouement of the Management of Technology
(MOT)-China Fellows Program, which every year sends graduate students
from the Haas School of Business, the School of Information or the
College of Engineering to explore China’s growth. The program
seeks to give students an understanding of the country’s high-tech
economy, an opportunity to practice analytical and strategic decision-making
skills needed to compete there, and the chance to network.
For Yang, the trip was also a homecoming of sorts. Born and raised
in Inner Mongolia, she earned her B.S. degree in 2001 from Beijing’s
Tsinghua University, the country’s top engineering school, and
came to Berkeley in 2002. Since then, she has ensconced herself at
the Berkeley Wireless Research Center, pursuing research in communication
systems and integrated chip design. But a 2006 MOT-China fellowship
meant she could extricate herself from academia a short while and get
a new view of her homeland.
“I plan to go back to China after I work in the states a few years,” she
says, explaining her motivations. “I want to gain knowledge of
both countries because I hope someday my experience will help me build
my own business in China. Having a background in both places will make
it easier.”
Yang already knows that running a successful tech company in China
means more than having superior technology. “You definitely have
to be able to build good relationships with people, particularly those
in government,” she says. “It’s complicated. Chinese
often pay a lot of attention to relationships, even more than technology.
Outsiders think Chinese culture is not wholly transparent, but once
you get in, you know everything.”
Although the Chinese native can count herself “in,” this
trip helped her meet crucial gatekeepers: governors and government
officials responsible for overseeing businesses. “They’ve
opened their minds to Western companies and are willing to learn about
the West,” she reports. “These are the people in charge
of everything, and they showed a lot of respect for people with technical
and engineering backgrounds especially. That’s why I want to
come back to China. The ‘feeling’ is there.”
For more information, go to http://mot.berkeley.edu/Berkeley_Students/MOTChina/Fellowship.htm.
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