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CHINESE PURSUING OWN TECH FORMATS

By STEPHANIE HOO


May 23, 2004 -- DVD? China's trying to do it one better - with a technology called EVD.
CDMA? The digital cell phone standard is so 2003, the Chinese say. Give TD-SCDMA a try instead.

These days, China's dominant message is this: We'll embrace the world - but on our terms. And nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of high technology, where behind the acronyms is a battle of standards that could have global repercussions.

Pushed by their government, Chinese firms are shunning technological protocols invented abroad and developing their own.

They want Chinese-made video discs to run on Chinese-invented players. They want Chinese consumers linking up with China-developed mobile gadgets.

"Dependency on foreign technology and ways to escape it, I think, have been very important themes in modern Chinese history," said Richard P. Suttmeier, a University of Oregon professor who studies China's technology policy for the National Bureau of Asian Research.

As Suttmeier sees it, China's secondary status in technology has given birth to a kind of "techno-nationalism."

This year, the Ministry of Science and Technology plans to spend $1.3 billion primarily "to fuel the country's high technology," according to the official newspaper China Daily.

In some cases, China is tired of paying foreign patent fees for products made and sold domestically - such as with DVD players, for which Chinese firms must pay $4.50 per machine to the six Japanese companies that developed the underlying DVD technology.

But demand in China has been limited so far. "It's a risky strategy," Suttmeier said. "It could backfire."

AP

http://www.nypost.com/business/24486.htm