In recognition that a large minimum share of the world market is needed if a company is to generate enough cash to develop a new generation of telephone exchanges, a brutal battle has just about been fought to the finish among the leading North American and European manufacturers, leaving L M Ericsson Telefon AB, Alcatel NV, Siemens AG, Northern Telecom Ltd and AT&T Corp as the winners. Even India, that inveterate exponent of the not-invented-here syndrome, has recognised that trying to develop and build its own telephone exchange is a mug’s game. Yet no such realisation has dawned on China – quite the reverse. It is so keen to avoid handing over its potentially large market for exchanges to foreigners that it has announced plans to create China Great Dragon Telecommunication out of the eight largest state manufacturers, the China Daily reported. Great Dragon will take over production capabilities of virtually the entire present Chinese industry, it quoted chairman Wu Jiangxing, who is also general director of the State Digital Switching System Engineering Technology Research Centre, as saying. Operations of joint ventures involving foreigners will not be directly affected, Wu said, adding that the aim of Great Dragon is to enable China to compete better with foreign firms. Great Dragon, under the ministries of Electronics Industry and of Posts & Telecommunications, has the Quixotoc mission of gradually taking over a telecommunications market now dominated by foreign firms, Wu said. The new company expects to start mass production of a digital exchange system next month after six months’ pilot production. By the end of August, orders for the exchange totalled more than 2.8m lines and Great Dragon plans to produce 3.5m lines of the digital exchange this year; its short term target is 10m lines a year.
