A Tour of Microsoft's Research Venture in Downtown Beijing

The richest capitalist enterprise in the world and the People's Republic of China are ready to take the Great Leap Forward together!

For a Frenchman visiting for the first time, Beijing is a real shock. Not because of the pagodas and temples, the rickshaws and palanquins, the traditional silk costumes or the blue Mao suits that have been worn every day by a billion people for nearly fifty years. All of these have long disappeared in the capital of the Empire of the Middle.

No, what hits you right in the face is the vast expanse of this resolutely modern metropolis. There is the great width of the avenues traversed by the thousands of automobiles that are gradually replacing the bicycles and whose drivers honk their horns incessantly. The frighteningly massive size of the administrative buildings makes them seem as if they were designed by architects that hesitated between Communist utilitarian realism and cautious modernity. Then there are the hundreds of office block towers under construction that have transformed the city into a gigantic, permanent building site.

Yet when the taxi first drops you in front of the modest, three-story office building that houses MSRA, your first reaction is one of slight disappointment. True, the firm's flag flutters in the wind beside the red flag of People's China, a strange vision that seems to symbolize the government policy of openness. But after passing so many gigantic buildings fully occupied by banks, BTP or telecommunications companies, you have to admit that the presence of the world's largest software company in the most heavily populated country on earth is a truly modest one.

The building that MSRA occupies is entirely dedicated to technology companies. These include Legend, the PRC's historic microcomputer manufacturer, and even French chip supplier STMicro Electronics.

It shouldn't be forgotten, however, that this is not a production unit, or even a development facility, but a research center, albeit one that employs some 170 researchers and engineers on a permanent basis and has some 200 more temporary staff, consisting of students finishing their theses, engineers or scientists who are needed on an occasional basis for certain projects.