Xin
Xian Chen, President of Capinfo and President
of the Beijing Multimedia Industry Association. Philippe Gauthier de la FIAM a
Dr. Xin Xian Chen was a key player in the
decision to hold the next World Summit of
the IFMA in Beijing. This engineer, who
for some time was a professor in the United
States, then a civil servant in China, is
now the President of Capinfo, a major multimedia
company based in Beijing. He also heads
BMIA, the young association currently organizing
the World Summit.
Xin Xian Chen’s story began in Beijing,
where he graduated from the prestigious
Qinq Hua University with a major in Optical
instruments. In 1981, he moved to the US,
where he studied electrical engineering
at Penn State University. He was granted
a Ph.D. in Information processing in 1986,
and worked two years in the US as a professor.
Upon returning to China in 1988, he started
working as a chief engineer for the city
of Beijing. The city was already changing
rapidly, and Dr. Xin Xian Chen’s task
was to promote the use of optical fibre
networks. He was also responsible for choosing
the software needed to manage the networks.
In 1994, he left the civil service and
was employed by SAP, a German software company
that he helped to get started in China.
“After six years in the government,
I understood the system well,” he
says, “and I hoped to do something
myself, rather than just work for others.
SAP was a very good company and I saw my
opportunity to learn how to manage a business.
I helped them to find their first Chinese
customers and we built upon that success.”
In 1998, seeing that the Internet would
constitute a major direction for industry,
he left SAP and created Capinfo as a state-owned
company. The idea was to promote the Internet
and to provide e-government and e-commerce
software to meet the needs of industries,
namely in areas such as the post, telecom,
radio, television, and banking.
The company quickly got huge government
mandates, including the networks that link
telecoms, cable TV and the Internet. It
also created for the Beijing government
an integrated network that handles, among
other things, more than 10 million payments
per month. In 2001, Capinfo became a public
firm listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
It currently employs 500 full-time employees
and 100 contract employees, and has subsidiairies
all over China.
The BMIA (Beijing Multimedia Industry Association)
was created on his initiative in 2003. About
100 of the 1,000 multimedia companies in
Beijing are already members. “We meet
regularly to exchange opinions and information,
and to discuss such issues as training and
international promotion,” explains
Xin Xian Chen. “One of the main problems
is that most businesses are very small.
We need market development.”
As the Chinese get richer, their needs
will shift from physical to cultural products,
he underlines. However, expertise in this
area is still scarce in China. “The
World Summit will be a great opportunity
to learn how to create our own cultural
industry. Even though our culture is very
different, international exchanges are important.
We have a lot to learn from technology and
the marketing point of view.”
Xin Xian Chen is well aware of some of
the issues that complicate cultural exchanges,
for instance intellectual property rights.
“Rising to international standards
will be a challenge for China,” he
admits. “but the situation has already
improved quite a lot, in part because Chinese
software companies like Capinfo also need
the protection IP legislation provides.”
With pressure coming from inside as well
as out, the future of IP rights looks promising.
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