Light-rail project marks start of reluctant move for hi-tech glory

When you meet a Beijing city official, he will give you the latest slogan 'the 1980s belonged to Shenzhen, the 1990s belonged to Pudong and 21st century belongs to Zhongguancun'.

Zhongguancun, in northwest Beijing, is what the media call the mainland's Silicon Valley and is where several of the country's biggest computer manufacturers, such as Great Wall, Founder and Legend, and many of its universities and research institutes are based.

But what the official was saying was not only a slogan but a piece of stock-market public relations, selling the 'Zhongguancun concept', which the city wants to be as successful as 'the handover concept' which saw markets in Hong Kong and the mainland boom in early 1997.

This concept is crucial to the success of one of the most remarkable pieces of stock surgery in the mainland since share trading began in 1990 and being undertaken by the Beijing city government.

In 1997, the central government dropped in the Beijing government's lap a hot potato - a listed company named Qiong Min Yuan, with 108,000 shareholders and trading suspended since February 18 that year after its chief executive was arrested in the country's biggest securities fraud.

The company had announced annual profits of 570 million yuan (about HK$530.1 million) for 1996, of which 540 million yuan was false.