Microsoft will spend $280 million on a Beijing research and development center and double its full-time R&D staff in China to 3,000 over the next few years, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft China’s chairman, Dr Zhang Ya-Qin, said during the center’s groundbreaking ceremony that China is the company’s largest R&D area outside the US. The center will be finished in 2010.

In 2006, the firm agreed to spend US$31 million on R&D labs in China, and it entered into an R&D joint venture with Lenovo last year. Microsoft’s decision to focus R&D on China indicates the country’s importance.

Microsoft does not disclose its revenue from the Chinese market. But Fortune Magazine estimated in a story last year that the software giant’s revenue from China would exceed $700 million last year, about 1.5% of Microsoft’s global sales.

All true and interesting. But no mention of the situation with...

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