38) UK is going to lose its advantage over China in IT Services

IT services industry of China is going to surpass or at least catch up with Britain within 5 years, said a report.

China’s promising software engineer development program is one of China's strengths. China is now being recognized as a cheaper destination than India, while India’s software development expenditure rises up by 15 percent to 20 percent, according to the report by a software outsourcing enterprise. In the report Sally Ernst, its CEO, wrote, "What we have found out all lead to the fact that China’s software industry is developing much more rapidly than that of India." Around 40% of the GDP of U.K. is based on services involving special expertise, including IT and financial services. The conclusion of the report is that it is necessary for Britain to put more efforts into education as well as skill improvement; otherwise it will have to face lagging behind. Thirty-five Chinese training schools are generating annually eight hundred thousand software graduates from a large population of one point three billion, while the U.K produced some twenty-seven thousand IT-related degree graduates in 2001 from a population
of some 60 million, and that figure fell to fourteen thousand seven hundred by the end of 2005. Taking the difference in the total population into consideration, the number of software engineers annually generated in China will be twice than that of Britain.

“The crux of U.K. students is that they regard office work as boring, full of problematic stereotypes and career deadlines," although software engineers have well-paid careers, yet the boom of British economy mostly relies on the well being of IT industry, according to the report.