Xi’an stands tall on the Chinese IT map, ahead of bigger peers

The Xi'an High-Tech Industries Development Zone is home to many outsourcing companies. [Wang Jing / for China Daily]

As the clock strikes 6 pm, hordes of employees dressed in colorful attire or smart casual business suits converge at the gates of Xi'an Software Park to head home after a hard day's toil. Spread over a core area of 0.33 square kilometers, the Xi'an Software Park is home to over 310 enterprises including big names like IBM, Oracle and NEC. Search engine rivals Google and Baidu are located on floors adjacent to each other.

"The lifts are not the same any longer, as they are often full, especially after Google and Baidu moved in," says an executive from the software park development center.

The world's second-largest maker of telecom hardware, Huawei, has also set up a campus here, and so has its rival ZTE, each having more than 6,000 employees.

The Xi'an High-Tech Industries Development Zone will eventually span to 90 sq km with an investment of 100 billion yuan (10.8 billion euros). Work on a new software park with an area of 7 sq km will begin next month, but there has already been good interest for office space.

Experts have often been perplexed as to what is it that attracts Fortune 500 companies and other big players to a region that was until now more know for its legendary terracotta warriors.

Xi'an was the old imperial capital of 13 dynasties and kingdoms, and in ancient times also the starting point of the Silk Road from central China to the west.