Glob – The Indusgeeks Blog

Doing nothing??!! Zilch… Let me put that in perspective. Last year a Beijing municipality ( you heard that right) announced that they will be creating a special zone called the China Virtual Economy District or Cyber Recreation District. To put that even more in perspective .. Beijing Municipality = Chinese Government = Billions of USD!!! Anyways, getting back to the Cyber Recreation District ( unfortunately called Cyber Recreation Districe by its web masters!) it is in fact a physical place called Shinjing where infrastructure is being created to host a set of animation , game development and virtual world development companies. This physical business park will be supplemented by a virtual business space called the Dotman World being jointly created by the Beijing Cyber Recreation Development Corp and MindArk ( the Swedish company which created Entropia Universe).

Now in typical Chinese fashion its very difficult to clearly understand the English on the website .However, from what I could glean if the envisioned scale of the project is realized it will be the biggest initiative by any government in the world to use Virtual Worlds as a serious business development and promotion multiplier.To quote from the site :
“Recently, the businesses of ‘virtual world’ have become the hottest topic in the world. These businesses have also brought new services and products into this new market. The fast growth of the virtual world industry drives lots of governments in the world thinking that to own the key technologies of virtual world will be the quickest way to become the winner of international economy in the future. ‘China Virtual Economy District’ has provided an idea of a brand-new business model of virtual world industry to help traditional enterprises become virtual enterprises easily. This makes the launch forum of ‘China Virtual economy District’ become the major forum of 2nd session Beijing culture creativity industry and are highly expected by China governments and international companies.

‘China Virtual Economy District’ it will play the leading role of virtual economy industry in the world. With a series of trading rules and data exchange standards, virtual enterprises with different resources and advantages can cooperate and help each other raising their abilities in doing business. ‘China Virtual Economy District’ creates a wide and whole new platform for traditional enterprises, internet companies and individuals to participate in. This means that the dream of the inter-connection of virtual world with real world will come true, and the new generation of culture originality of CRD is started. Also means that this is a giant step to the promotion of industry infrastructure of Beijing Shijing district.”

What this means for India and the world at large is that unless our governments and corporations realise the potential of virtual worlds to transform our business and social spaces and processes we’ll be left to cope with a massive head start from Chinese companies . It’s time that Indian companies and government woke up and smelled the virtual salts…

- Sid