李開復：中國即將迎來信息技術的黃金時代
China Is Poised for an I.T. Golden Age
李開復：中國即將迎來信息技術的黃金時代
BEIJING — Chinese universities graduate more than 600,000 engineering students a year. China has consistently placed at or near the top of programming competitions. And while we have not seen China become a leader in information technology and computing, I expect that this will change in the coming decade.
北京：每年在中國的大學畢業生中，有60萬的工科學生。在各項程序設計的競賽中，中國學生也始終名列前茅甚至高居榜首。但是中國並沒有成爲信息技術和計算機工程領域的領頭羊，所以我希望在未來的十年內，這一狀況會有所改變。
Since the Internet revolution of the late 1990s, many successful companies have been built by taking American ideas and localizing them for China. These companies may have “copied” from the United States at first, but they acted swiftly, focused on their customers and developed their products, adding more and more local innovations.
自上世紀90年代末的互聯網革命以來，許多中國企業成功地吸收了美國的創意概念並實現了其在中國的本地化策略。剛開始，他們只是“複製”美國概念，但他們行動迅速，專注於自己的顧客，發展自己的產品，增加了越來越多的本地化創意。
For example, Tencent, one of China’s three Internet juggernauts, started with an instant-messaging product named QQ, which was a replica of the same system on which Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger were based. But today, QQ has evolved to become a very different product — a combination of instant messaging, social networking, universal ID and gaming center. QQ has built the world’s largest online community (about 700 million active accounts), while its American counterparts continue to build instant messaging as loss leaders.
中國互聯網三巨頭之一的騰訊公司就是一個很好的例子。騰訊的發展始自即時通訊產品QQ，可以說是雅虎通和MSN等軟件使用的系統的翻版。但是如今的QQ已經發展成爲一個完全不同的產品：集即時消息、社交網路、通用帳號和遊戲大廳於一身。騰訊QQ已經成爲世界上最大的在線社區（有7億多的活躍用戶），而美國的即時通訊服務同類產品卻都在虧損經營。
I expect this type of innovation to proliferate, for three reasons.
我期待看到這種形式的創新會在未來出現大幅增加，我有以下三個原因：
First, we are entering the age of open platforms, mobile computing, pad devices, open-source and cloud computing. These will create many opportunities for talented Chinese I.T. professionals.
首先，我們正在進入這樣一個時代：開放平臺、移動計算、平板設備、開放源碼和雲計算。這些都會爲有天賦的中國IT人才提供大顯身手的好機會。
Second, development costs are the lowest in history. On the open platforms, four or five good engineers can build an application and validate it in just a few months.
第二，現在的開發成本達到歷史最低，就開放平臺而言，四五個優秀的工程師可以在短短几個月內就編寫好應用程序並驗證它的可行性。
Finally, the Chinese market is growing very rapidly, and more innovations will come out of such large markets. We expect the country to have 500 million mobile Internet users by 2012, and perhaps twice that in five years. Great innovative mobile companies are sure to follow.
最後，中國的市場發展特別迅速，這樣的一個大市場環境將會催生更多的創新出現。到2012年，中國有望擁有5億的手機上網用戶，並可能在五年內翻一番。優秀創新的手機公司也將會應運而生。
An ancient Western adage — necessity is the mother of invention — is appropriate here. The Year of the Dragon begins on Jan. 23, and hundreds of millions of people will want to watch the New Year’s gala on their computers. That has provided the impetus for inventing P2P, or person-to-person, technologies to handle the surge.
有一句古老的西方諺語是這樣說的：“需求是創新之母”，這句話很適合用在這裏。2012龍年將於1月23日開始，億萬觀衆會想在手機上觀看春節聯歡晚會，爲了應對觀看人數激增的問題，點對點技術創新也勢在必行。
Chinese users have never had the habit of paying for software or digital content, but Chinese companies have come up with many clever micropayment strategies. For example, a Chinese e-book is free at first, but once you read half of it and get hooked, you have to pay a nominal charge per thousand words.
中國的用戶從未養成軟件或數字內容付費的習慣，但是中國公司卻想出了很多絕妙的小額支付策略。比如中國的電子書一開始會是免費提供，但等到你閱讀到一半對書的內容着迷了之後，你就得爲後面的內容每千字支付少量的費用。
Traditional Chinese media have limited information, so sites like Sina Weibo have emerged, combining the viral propagation of Twitter and the rich media of Facebook.
傳統中國媒體提供的信息資源有限，所以類似新浪微博這樣的網站就紛紛涌現，這些網站結合了推特的病毒式信息傳播與社交網絡的豐富多元媒體資源。
What else might we look forward to? Chinese parents care deeply about education, yet schools in poorer cities are inadequate. Can China invent effective distance-learning solutions? There are more than 160 cities in China with more than a million people. These urban environments are the perfect places to develop “solomo” (social, local, mobile) applications: for example, finding a fast-food restaurant offering a discount within walking distance. Most Chinese people don’t have credit cards. Can Chinese phones leapfrog those in the United States and become our electronic wallets?
那我們還可以期待些什麼？中國家長對孩子的教育殷殷關切，但是較貧困地區的學校資源卻並不完備。中國能否提出有效的遠程學習解決方案？在中國，有160多個城市擁有超過百萬人口，這些城市環境是開發“社交本地移動”（solomo）應用程序的絕佳地點，例如在步行距離範圍內尋找打折的快餐店。大部分的中國人都不用信用卡，中國的手機能否超越美國成爲我們的電子錢包？
Which of these speculations will come true in China first? I’m not sure, but I am sure that I have missed many other “killer applications” from China. In a country full of energy, desire, talent and ideas, there is no doubt that China will become a world leader in information technology.
我的這些猜想，哪一項會在中國率先實現？我並不確定，但我很確定的是，我已經錯過了中國很多其他的“殺手級應用程序“（指絕大部分用戶會用到的應用）。在這樣一個充滿活力、需求、天賦和創意的國家，中國無疑會成爲世界信息技術的領導者。
Kai-Fu Lee is the former head of Google China and the founder of Innovation Works, a Chinese incubator and investment firm.
李開復：谷歌中國區前任總裁，2009年9月宣佈離職並創辦孵化計劃投資公司創新工場任董事長兼首席執行官。
