Awaiting the Call From on High...

While the general image of China's old-style state-owned manufacturing companies as cumbersome, grossly overstaffed monoliths persists despite many of them having trimmed down and gone into profit, far less public exposure has always been the lot of equally state-owned--but far smaller--firms that have quietly and unobtrusively got on with the jobs in hand and turned healthy if not stupendous profits year in, year out.

Which is where we find Tianjin Zhonghuan Systems Engineering Company Ltd.,--Zhonghuan Systems for short and whose logo is whittled down to a simple Z Systems, by which name it is probably best known. Founded in 1987 to develop a subway tracking system and to make simple electric meters, it later became a contractor which actually installed the meters far and wide around Tianjin and other parts of north-east China.

"We're come quite a long way since then," says Z Systems' managing director, Qin Ke Jing, modestly. "Our growth has been consistent, and our staff of 90 designers, scientists and engineers stable. It's a good team with high morale. Particularly pleasing is that they all work enthusiastically together when we're faced with new high-tech challenges from clients. "Naturally we all hope for the chance of contributing to the success of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in areas in which we specialize. We offer a broad range of systems that include security monitoring [such as CCTV], communications in all its forms, public-address networks, building automation, electronically "intelligent" homes and offices, solar-driven technology and even satellite linkages.

"In fact, we designed and provided systems of this nature for the superb Tianjin Sports Stadium, which opened in 1995. And when the 43rd World Table Tennis Championships were held there, we were responsible for everything from the communications network to a fail-safe CCTV system, along with the huge electronic scoreboard and all necessary LED [light-emitting diode] displays."

Qin added: "The Olympics are about excellence as athletes strive to become 'faster, higher, stronger' as encouraged by the International Olympic Committee. As a company, Z Systems always aims for excellence and is very environmentally conscious, so it would be tremendous for us to be sub-contracted by the big companies who win the bids to construct the Olympic Stadium, Olympic Village and the many other major facilities to apply our expertise.

Z Systems' promotional literature reflects great versatility via a list of a wide range of contracts successfully completed. The largest and most challenging of these, recalls Qin, was during the firm's early days--its task being to redesign and install virtually every high-tech system at Tianjin Railway Station.

"We completed everything demanded of us, and there were no problems," he said. "It was an important challenge for us because its success put us on the map as an innovative firm which solves problems for clients as well as providing them with top-class systems." This was certainly true at the likes of Tianjin's high-rise Jili (Isetan) Shopping Center, where--due to the building's unusual design--Z Systems needed all its innovative powers in successfully designing and installing electronic and electrical systems.

The firm is particularly proud of its ZHV-3 multi-media TV supervision/safeguard system, which merges all manner of multi-media technologies into an organic whole. Its numerous innovations include tongue-twisters such as long-distance line-image transmission and video/audio frequency matrix cut-exchange ... high technology that has earned the company ISO 9001 certification for quality systems.

So the message seems clear: Z Systems knows what it's about and, if Qin Kejing is representative of his fellow boffins, technologists and other staff, then the company's state-owned heart is in the right place.

* Why the name "Z"? Explained Qin: "The letter originates from the Latin and Greek, and is also the initial for the word 'zenith'--which means both a challenging path and the highest point, or peak, of something. We travel the first and strive for the second."