China's Bill Gates forges a hi-tech business empire

IF SOFTWARE guru and billionaire Bill Gates were Chinese, he would probably be called Shi Yuzhu. The two men share a remarkable gift for software engineering and a midas touch for pursuing sound developments.

Like Harvard drop-out and Microsoft founder Mr Gates, Mr Shi was not just any ordinary student - while his colleagues were thinking about getting a good job and settling down, the young Mr Shi saw enormous potential in China's fledgling desktop publishing industry.

Starting by himself in 1989 with an initial capital of 4,000 yuan (about HK$3,568), Mr Shi has built his appropriately named computer company, Giant, into an empire. It now has assets of more than 450 million yuan and a staff of over 550 working in 38 city offices all over the country.

The real break came two years ago, when Mr Shi quit his assigned job in the statistics bureau in Anhui province and began researching Chinese computer software in Shenzhen. He spent 150 days and nights in the laboratory developing his first Chinese software programme.

Since then, the company has enjoyed exponential growth to the point where today it holds a 95 per cent share of the domestic market for computers with a ''thinkpad'' - a built-in handwriting component. Sales of the product leapt 100 per cent to 360 million units last year, reaping a net profit of 46 million yuan.

The 31-year-old Mr Shi said he jumped on the thinkpad concept after realising many mainlanders found it difficult to grasp the complex process of keying Chinese characters into computers.