Victims of hit-and-run rickshaw drivers who were wheeled into the Beijing Union Hospital back in 1934 may have noticed an unusual piece of nonmedical equipment. Described, perhaps apocryphally, as an "information processing system," it was IBM's first install in China.

I learned this implausible bit of trivia at three o'clock one recent morning while my brain was as sluggish as that historic machine. At that time of day, ask not for whom the phone tolls, it tolls for thee. I fumbled for it and was rewarded with a cheerful voice asking me if it was 6:00 a.m. in America. It was, on the other coast. But, since I don't awaken to calls from China every morning, this was no time to let a trifling time zone miscalculation deter me.

It had taken several months and the investigative tenacity of Ari Fishkind of Technology Solutions, an IBM media relations group, to set up this call, unearthing one of the bigger AS/400 opportunities on either side of the bamboo curtain.

The genial voice on the phone belonged to Mr. Mark Guan, an IBM media representative. While I struggled to clear my head, he told me that IBM is enjoying rapid growth in this emerging market. In each of the last three years, sales have increased over 50 percent, and the 700 IBM employees now working in China have forged an install base that spans most major industries.

It was not always so. IBM's involvement in China was interrupted for a period of 30 years beginning in 1949. I checked, and that coincides with the ascendancy of Mao Tse-tung. Diplomacy interceded in 1972, when, after years of hunting communists, Richard Nixon started visiting them. His outreach to China culminated in normalized relations between the two nations in 1979, at which time IBM returned to install its first midrange system in the Shen Yang Blowers Works.

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Guan continued, IBM opened offices in Beijing in the north and Shanghai on the East China Sea. By 1992, IBM had established a wholly-owned subsidiary in Beijing?the IBM China Company Limited?and opened additional offices in Guangzhou (formerly Canton) in the south.

Guan introduced Ms. Diana Yin Danling, who is the business unit manager for banking, finance, and securities, and Mr. Li Quing Huang, the AS/400 marketing support manager. They head a team that supports one of China's four largest banks, the Agricultural Bank of China, diminutively known as ABC. By any standard, however, this is no small bank. It employs 500,000 people who staff an astonishing 50,000 branch offices spread across thousands of cities, towns, and villages in China's 26 provinces. By contrast, the Bank of America, one of the largest in the United States, operates 2,000 branch offices in 10 western states. ABC's assets, although not approaching the Bank of America's, total a respectable $124 billion.

ABC has chosen IBM to modernize its OPS (banking operations, that is). Prior to 1987, the bank relied principally on an IBM mainframe in its headquarters and PCs in its larger branches. The plan, explained Ms. Yin and Mr. Li, is to place AS/400s in the provinces and network them, gradually pushing automation down to the bank's more modest and remote locations. Each of the provinces will eventually have multiple AS/400s linking larger branch offices to regional IBM mainframes and to the headquarters system. In smaller cities and rural offices, PCs will connect banking operations to the network.

The AS/400 will support a full range of banking applications, including financial systems, customer account management, ATM support, and credit card billing. ABC will also develop applications in-house. The AS/400's native language support capability is integral to the success of this huge undertaking. The user-friendly Chinese version of OS/400 expedites training; and IBM, in consort with the emerging Asian Business Partner community, has invested in the development of Hanzi (Chinese character) applications.

To meet the growing demand for native Chinese applications, IBM opened a software development center in Shanghai and entered into joint ventures with two local software houses. Bob Dies, the AS/400 Division's new general manager, confirmed in a June MC interview ("A Conversation with Bob Dies") the importance of application availability. "In emerging markets," said Dies, "the major challenge is to make sure we have Business Partners and application providers present in those countries with solutions."

Ms. Yin explained that China's underdeveloped infrastructure will have an impact on the speed with which the project proceeds. Although several foreign telephony providers have contracted with the Chinese government to upgrade the nation's telephone system, telephone lines are not yet readily available. A solstice can elapse while a customer waits for a simple dial-up line. What service is available is often not sufficiently reliable for data transmission. This was confirmed by several disconnects during our conversation.

Although the bank is state-owned, the availability of foreign currency and trained technical professionals is an additional delimiting factor for Chinese industries eager to automate. Such projects, therefore, require patient commitment and long-term customer support?an opportunity for IBM to reclaim its roots.

IBM's traditional respect for the individual, and its ethical business standards, can do more in China than serve the company's ambitions. They can build human as well as technological bridges to a nation on the uneasy verge of assimilation into the global market. Historically, the promise of western trade for China has been a Trojan horse, alternately stuffed with benefits and exploitation. Thus, who stands inside the horse matters.

IBM Chairman Lou Gerstner expressed his hopes for IBM's partnership with China this way: "We want to become an important part of China's economic development, and we want to be a local company supported by global resources." The global makeup of the IBM China Company reflects his desire: 15 percent of its employees are from other nations.

I wondered how the AS/400, and computer technology in general, were being received in China. Mark Guan rather earnestly said that the Chinese were "very open-minded to new technology." There was a sense of urgency and excitement, he said. "The people are diligent, and happy to learn."

That was precisely my experience some 15 years ago when I travelled to Taiwan to install a computer system. While there, I picked up just two essential words of Chinese, and I strained now to recall them.

"Pijo," I finally said, testing my linguistic prowess.

After struggling with my accent, someone chuckled and deciphered: "Beer!"

"Shay-shay," I offered, which means "thanks."

Having exhausted my conversational Chinese, I wished them well with their project, and they most graciously thanked me for my time and interest. I sat for a moment, grateful for an opportunity to glimpse a world so different yet increasingly so like my own. It was four o'clock in the morning. My mind, exhausted and exhilarated, fluttered about like the moth outside my darkened window and finally settled on this thought: it was something Confucius understood 2,500 years ago when he said, "By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart."

To all those who made this story possible: "Shay-shay a lot."

Victor Rozek has 17 years of experience in the data processing industry, including seven years with IBM in Operations Management and Systems Engineering.

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