XI'AN, March 23 (Xinhuanet) -- At eight o'clock every morning,
Zhang Xiaolin, a 36-year-old self-made entrepreneur, drives his
Volvo into a European-style office building in Xi'an, northwestern
China and switches on a laptop to begin his work as board chairman
of a high-tech company.
   Born in a remote village of Huanglong County which is still one
of the poorest regions in China, Zhang is now well off.
   Looking around his well-equipped office, he says, "Knowledge
has changed my destiny."
   In his youth, haunted by poverty, Zhang dropped out of school
several times. In 1983, however, he entered the Beijing Forestry
University with the highest marks in his county.
   With 20,000 yuan (about 2,410 U.S dollars) borrowed from
friends, Zhang set up his own company in the early 1990s.
   After eight years of hard work, Zhang, with his talent for
making money by using advanced technology, has become a typical 
western China self-made businessman.
   Dealing in advanced medical apparatus, Zhang's company supplies
more than 3,000 hospitals in China and its corporate capital has
climbed to 35 million yuan (about 4.22 million U.S. dollars).
   Zhang is not alone in his success. Sun Haiying, a local
official in charge of science and technology, said that deep
pockets like Zhang's will come up constantly as private high-tech
companies continue to flourish in Shanxi.
   Currently, there are about 8,500 private high-tech companies in
Shanxi, of which over 80 are private company groups and 322 have a
revenue of more than 10 million yuan ( about 1.2 million U.S.
dollars). 
   Researcher Shi Ying from the Shannxi Academy of Social Science
said, "With the deepening of China's reform and opening up, lots
of well-educated technical professionals have left universities
and scientific institutions to start up their own companies."
   Scholar Jiang Tushan said, "These people are different from the
farmer-turned-entrepreneurs running township businesses or the
industrial entrepreneur of the past. They are intellectuals-turned
merchants, with knowledge and technology as their main strength.
   The Xi'an New High-Tech Development Zone well known for
incubating high-tech enterprises and promoting the use of
technical innovations is seen as the cradle of intellectual-turned
merchants in western China.
   Blessed with the opportunities brought by the country's west
development program, more and more college graduates are flocking
to the development zone to explore their own career paths.
   Han Jun, a former computer student with the Xi'an Jiaotong
University, is confident about his career.
   Still under 30, Han is now running a company specializing in
system integration.   Enditem