BEIJING: Thomas Friedman identified Dalian as China's Bangalore in his seminal work The World is Flat five years ago. Xia Deren, the port city's Party chief, who was mayor when the Pulitzer winner interviewed him, believes that this will become reality in about five years.

The rise might be partly because Xia, a technocrat, throws more weight to IT talent cultivation than anyone else.

"Dalian is better than the Indian Silicon Valley in terms of infrastructure and environment, but in terms of human resources and enterprise competitiveness, the city lags behind Bangalore," he told China Daily on Wednesday.

"We expect Dalian to be on par with or overtake Bangalore in five to seven years," he said.

Friedman was surprised when he heard that Xia, the then 49-year-old Dalian mayor, was a former college president.

The New York Times columnist exclaimed in his book that "China does a pretty good job of promoting people on merit. The Mandarin meritocratic culture here still runs very deep."

As a testimony to the meritocratic culture, Xia was credited with helping catapult Dalian to stardom as China's outsourcing capital - a long way from its former days as a rusty base of petrochemical plants, shipbuilders and machine factories.

It beat first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai to rank fifth overall in the Global Delivery Index in 2007, according to Xia.

The International Data Corp's ranking compared 35 cities in 18 countries in the Asia Pacific region that had the potential to be global delivery destinations.

Xia said that when IT companies, especially those in the world's top 500, choose where to invest in India, Bangalore is their choice. In China, Dalian is the favorite. "That's how some people jumped to the conclusion that Dalian is China's Bangalore," he said.

Xia said he led a delegation to Bangalore in 2000 and Dalian has learned from India's experience in developing the IT sector, which still maintains a fast growth pace.

The software industry in Northeast China's Liaoning province has developed so fast and has processed so many orders that engineers are badly in need, Xia said.

Xia, an NPC deputy who is attending the annual national legislative meeting in Beijing, said he has urged all 22 universities in Dalian to set up software and information service majors. Six software development institutes have also been launched, which combined have recruited up to 70,000 students.

But Dalian still needs people of higher caliber, like software system engineers and corporate leaders, he said.

The official said Dalian has offered at least 300 million yuan ($44 million) each year in subsidies to talented people and training. Each September, the city holds a special recruitment week to attract Chinese students to return from overseas, he said.

By the end of 2009, at least 507 businesses, including 38 global Fortune 500 companies, have settled in Dalian's software park. The city's revenue from software industry has been growing by at least 30 percent annually, according to Xia.

Dalian, with a population of 6 million, is striving to become the locomotive in Northeast China's coastal economic belt by vigorously developing the IT industry while improving the competitiveness of its shipbuilding, logistics and finance industries, he said.

To optimize its industrial structure in the wake of the global financial crisis, the port city will also develop a green economy, focusing on nuclear power equipment, windmill turbines, new energy automobiles and bio-agriculture, he said.