It's not often that you can say that being involved with technology makes you proud, but the peaceful protests against the military regime in Burma - and the violent government response - really shows that technology is changing the world at its most fundamental level.

In such a closed country, where the government is making every effort to cut internet links and shut down mobile phone networks to prevent the world seeing the result of its repression, and where foreign journalists are mostly banned from visiting, the truth is being brought to us by mobile phone cameras and enterprising bloggers who know how to circumvent the technical barriers.

When the Burmese military junta killed 3,000 people in a previous uprising in 1998, we could not see the results and world opinion soon faded. Now, technology is bringing the full horror to the eyes of the world and even Burma's allies are forced to respond.

It's a good day for IT - if not, sadly, for the protesters in Burma.

I was somewhat surprised to learn today that the place where I live - St Albans in Hertfordshire - has been voted the new Mayfair on the latest version of the board game Monopoly.

This surely can only be down to the fact that the train service into London is so poor that nobody ever gets to leave the city and has nothing better to do than vote for its most-expensive-location-on-the-board status.

Nonetheless, it made me wonder (while standing on the station platform waiting for the train that never arrives) - what would a Monopoly board for IT look like?

Where are the top locations to work for IT professionals?  And the worst? London and the south-east always comes out top in terms of the number of IT jobs and the highest wages - but does that make them the places that most people in UK IT actually want to work?

Is there some sunny outpost that takes the top spot? And where is your Old Kent Road?

I remember several years ago, Computing ran a feature looking at the relative opportunities for IT in Reading and Barrow-in-Furness, and the team here was highly amused to read the email sent to the article's writer castigating him in no uncertain terms for the perceived negativity towards Barrow.

So there are plenty of opinions out there - let us know yours. What are your Monopoly suggestions for the working in IT version of the game?

At the start of Computing's week in China, we discussed the country's aim to be the centre of the technology world. After five busy days, how realistic does that objective seem?

You do not need to be here long to get a sense of the huge potential. Shenzhen has been developed to show the West what China is capable of - a busy and growing metropolis designed to prove that the success of Hong Kong was not entirely down to British patronage.

This is a country that prides itself on its ability to innovate - despite the Western view that China is all about cheap knock-offs and fake products. 

And the emergence of technology suppliers such as Huawei, our hosts this week, demonstrates that Chinese firms can take on their US and European rivals.

And yet...

While we have been here, a story broke in the UK about alleged Chinese hacking attempts on the Foreign Office. Although the Chinese government denied any knowledge or involvement, the innuendo in the news reports was that this would not have happened without at least tacit approval. The story shows the distrust that still exists between West and East. Sixty years of China closing itself off from the rest of the world and 40 years of Cold War are not forgotten easily.

But cold wars are fought between governments and politicians. When you meet the locals, and talk to the Chinese - especially the younger generation - they are not so different from us. Their hopes, dreams and fears are much the same. Of course there are cultural differences, as there are with India, with the Middle East, even with the US, but those differences can be turned into strengths, as India has proved.

The technological capability certainly exists - perhaps the most amazing statistic of the week was the 48 per cent of Huawei's staff working on research and development. Try to find a US or European rival to match that.

And my favourite quote of the week came from Huawei's marketing chief Xu Zhijun ('Eric') that the company aims to 'combines Western professional management practices with the wisdom of Eastern culture.'

Hong Kong is the thriving embodiment of that mixture of Western business and Chinese heritage. But HK has the one thing China lacks - experience.

There is a certain sense of naivety about the Chinese business approach - it is not something you can put a finger on, it is a feeling not a series of facts and hence perhaps entirely subjective - but it is a view I have heard from others that have visited the country.

You simply cannot quickly learn the ways of the world if you have turned your back on that world for so many years.

Huawei, for example, has invested heavily in bringing in Western advisers, such as IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers,  to help bridge that gap. But you sense that currently much of that learning is by process rather than instinct. It is all very well to follow best practice as a flowchart - do this, then do this, if this happens do this - but that gets you only so far. It takes time for those practices to become second nature. It is a bit like going on a training course - you come away with all these new ideas and techniques but you are not truly effective until you can put the manual aside, take the best of what you were taught, combine it with your own abilities and personality, and make it an instinctive part of what you do.

The question for China is how much it really wants to fully engage with the West. Yes, it wants to learn and understand Western ways to be able to do business. Yes, it recognises it needs to meet us halfway rather than expect us to adapt to Chinese culture. But does this country want to be a part of the world, or just to do business with it?

It has a model in Hong Kong of that fusing of the best of West and East into a business giant. But there is all that distrust to overcome, and the cultural hurdles to get over.

You cannot ignore the amount of change taking place in China though, and perhaps sooner than we think, these concerns and that naivety will pass. Few could have predicted where China would be today 20 years ago.

My personal view is that China does not yet quite 'get' the rest of the world - and that the rest of the world certainly does not 'get' China. But I leave this fascinating country with a sense of enormous potential, of rapid change that its rulers are trying to control and keep at their own pace, but with an emerging generation whose expectations and ambitions will be very different from those of their parents.

The Chinese technology sector has yet to show that it can transform the industry in the way that India has, but don't rule it out.

One way or another, China is going to be a major part of our future.

There is a great contradiction that lies at the heart of Hong Kong. For a place where change is constant, it prides itself on the fact that it has not changed.

Computing asked our guide here this week what has changed most about the former British territory since it was handed back to China in 1997.

'Nothing has changed,' she said. 'We just sent your Governor back.'

Despite all the trepidation and uncertainty felt by the business community back in 1998, modern Hong Kong prides itself on keeping business as usual since the mainland took political control. But all over the territory, everything changes. Building work is constant, whole areas of Victoria Harbour - the waterway dividing Hong Kong Island and Kowloon - have been reclaimed from the sea to make space for new developments. Yet so much is the same - the noonday gun is fired every day near Causeway Bay as it has been since colonial days; horses still race around Happy Valley racetrack in the only legal form of gambling in Hong Kong; and most of the inhabitants keep on making money.

China has protected the 'one country - two systems' principle in Hong Kong, and it exists still as an adjunct to the rest of the nation. Hong Kong has its own border controls - on landing at HK airport, foreign visitors fill out a Hong Kong arrivals card, then hand over their departure card at the border when crossing into neighbouring Shenzhen on the mainlaind where they hand in a Chinese arrivals card, just as if passing from one country to another. Mainlanders need to do the same unless they have a Hong Kong ID card - but that doesn't stop them arriving in their thousands every week for the tax-free shopping in HK.

You almost sense that Hong Kong is the face that China wants the rest of the world to see - and Shenzhen certainly strives to be like its neighbour. But Hong Kong will be unique for a long time to come.

As for the technology world, HK is a big bonus for Chinese IT firms. With seven million residents in an area not much larger than London - but with only 10 per cent of the land space inhabitable - it is a microsm of business IT elsewhere. With multinational financial services instutions, major retailers, one of the world's largest airports, five different mobile phone networks, and an incredibly technology-literate population, Hong Kong is a great proving and testing ground.

Here the world's first major 3G networks were installed and tested, and in May last year, local mobile operator PCCW launched the world's first live, real-time broadcast mobile TV service, which now has more than 100,000 subscribers.

These are technologies that will soon be rolled out to the rest of the world. For Chinese supplier Huawei, working with PCCW on these projects brings invaluable experience that it can offer to international customers. The networking specialist is now rolling out its multimedia broadcast technology to 60 countries.

The unique nature of Hong Kong also means that mobile networks need to cope with closely-packed high-rise buildings, underground tunnels, steep and hilly terrain dividing the island, and one of the world's highest population densities. Proving the technology in such a testing environment gives local suppliers a potential edge over rivals.

Hong Kong is high-tech, modern and fast-growing, and China's technology industry is reaping the benefits of its unique ability to change and to not change at the same time. 

Computing has moved on now to Hong Kong after three days in Shenzhen. If you read the previous blog entries from this trip you may have picked up a feel for what this busy corner of China is like, but here's a few more details for the otherwise uninitiated.

Shenzhen was designated as a Special Economic Zone in 1980 - effectively turning the city into a massive business park and centre of economic entrepreneurship. It has some of China's wealthiest inhabitants thanks to its thriving stock exchange - one of only two on the mainland along with Shanghai. Apartments in a desirable area of the city sell for around £300,000 - not far short of UK prices. The local restaurants - or at least the ones we visited - are amazing. Real Chinese food is nothing like what you would find in your local takeaway at home - as long as you can stomach jellyfish sashimi, chilli fried eel, aromatic crispy goose, and live prawns soaked in rice wine then flambed alive on your table, among other delicacies.

Of course, anyone visiting a less-developed part of China, and in particular the rural areas, would come away with a totally different view of the country, but Shenzhen is all about proving to the West what China is capable of. It is no coincidence at the tax perks and investment were put into a city that neighbours Hong Kong. This is what the government and business community in China want the world to see - a young city full of people whose lives mix capitalist opportunity and Oriental heritage, and a demonstration of what China could become.

But it wouldn't feel right to come to somewhere so different from the UK without a few touches of the surreal - the best example being the band playing at a local bar last night. Covers of Abba (Dancing Queen, of course) and Black-Eyed Peas songs mixed with Chinese hits, but the strangest moment of all was listening to the tiny, petite girl singing - she can't have been older than 17 or 18 - and realising that she was singing, in English, about her 'lovely lady lumps'...

The BBC News web site is banned in China. I can look at any other part of the BBC site - I can keep up with the latest developments in EastEnders if I really want to. But if I want to use the UK's most popular news site - no chance.

The BBC's news services is considered by some in China to be the propaganda mouthpiece of the British government and the West. As the best-known Western news agency in this part of the world, the BBC is fighting a legacy of misconception.

You can read the web sites of The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph - every one with much more of a political agenda than the BBC. But our national broadcaster is, somewhat ironically, considered the dangerous government mouthpiece. Someone should have told Alastair Campbell.

This media censorship creates one of the biggest negative perceptions of China in the West. Add to that software piracy, copyright theft, accusations of human rights abuse, and the spectre of the Communist bogeyman, and you have many of the worst views of the country that its companies have to overcome to trade as equals in the West.

Huawei chief marketing officer Xu Zhijun admits the company has to make 'one hundred times the efforts and face one hundred times the challenges' compared to US or European rivals before it can win international business as a result of these preconceptions.

But how realistic a picture do these controversial topics really paint of modern China?

When Computing first visited India about five years ago as the offshore outsourcing boom took off, you quickly learned that India cannot be judged by our Western values - it is just too different.

China is just the same.

Take, for example, the explanation of the role of democracy in modern China given to me by one young person here. Democracy is seen by the younger generation as a goal to be achieved - but one that cannot truly be reached until the country has tackled the challenges caused by the huge disparity between rich and poor, rural and urban society in a country of 1.2 billion people. Other aspects of life are considered more important goals to achieve, on the route to democracy.

In the West of course, democracy is seen as the fundamental tenet of our belief system and society, the foundation upon which everything else is built.

Does that mean China is wrong, or just different? India is again the best comparison - a country of one billion and the world's largest democracy. But how different is the life of a rural Indian farmer 1,000 miles from Delhi with a vote, and a rural Chinese farmer 1,000 miles from Beijing without a vote? Probably not much. China has never been a democracy, even before Chairman Mao it was ruled by an Emporer and further back split by feuding warlords. Democracy has only become a consideration as the country engages with Western democracies.

Surely if we reject China for some of its values, we are rejecting the opportunity to engage in cultural and social debate about those differences, and to encourage the country to embrace democracy as we have in the West? After all, 25 years ago we would scarcely have considered China to be the economic powerhouse it has become. It has shown a willingness to change - that is a good starting point.

Chinese schoolchildren are taught little about the Cultural Revolution - it is seen as a passing part of history, not a factor in today's society. The Tiananmen Square massacre though is still a taboo subject in official circles - everyone knows it happened, but they would rather forget it as a regrettable stain on recent history.

Few of the younger generation, I am told, consider themselves to be Communists. It is just a label used by politicians.

Like India, that new generation has enormous enthusiasm and pride in taking their country out into the world.  Unlike India, they live with the unique situation of being the first brought up under the government's one-child policy, limiting most families to a single child.

This is a policy that has had terrible consequences and as-yet unforeseen implications. In rural China, millions of families have aborted female babies because they want their one child to be a boy who can work in the fields. As a result, by 2010 China will have 60 million single men - the equivalent of the entire population of the UK, many of whom will never marry and may never even have a relationship.

What also are the effects of a whole generation that has never known what it is like to have a brother or sister? And the burden those children will have to take in caring alone for their elderly parents in years to come?

But, like much of what we perceive about China, even this policy has had benefits - aside from the obvious one of population control.

Many children have been able to study, go to university, and even travel abroad to universities in the US, UK and Australia purely because as an only child their parents can afford to send them for the first time. This has been a particular boon for girls who once may have been passed over for further education in favour of their brothers. It is this educated, English-speaking generation that is the future of China. Go to one of the bars here in Shenzhen and see the energy and anticipation and pride that these young people have in their country and their future.

China is by no means perfect - it has huge flaws and problems, many exacerbated to the West by some fundamental differences in values and beliefs. But what country is perfect? Certainly none in the West.

China is trying to open itself up to the world, and the least we can do is open our eyes to China. The opportunity for the West is to engage with China, encourage it to understand and value the aspects of our lives that mean the most to us. By rejecting China for its obvious flaws, we risk rejecting the opportunity to be part of the global community that a new generation of Chinese are enthusiastically embracing.

Day two of Computing's visit to Shenzhen and Hong Kong in China, and it has been a day of acronyms.

In this job, you rather get used to the infamous TLAs (three-letter acronyms) but when you get into the depths of the business of Huawei - supplying telecoms operators with communications equipment - you enter a whole new world. Not just TLAs but FLAs too - OTN, WDM, DWDM, HBA, VLH, OSNCP, MSTP, ASON, GMPLS and on it goes. And that was just one section of the vast Huawei exhibition hall, centrepiece of the firm's 1.3 million square metre campus outside Shenzhen.

'Vast' is a good word to describe the experience of visiting one of China's most internationally successful technology companies.

The demo centre is as spacious as I've ever seen - a huge hall waiting in anticipation for the hundreds of visitors it would need to be filled.

Some 20,000 staff work on this one site - 3,000 of them even live in subsidised housing on the campus, complete with shops, bars, gym and a hospital. The view when lunchtime starts and thousands of employees stream to the canteens is something to behold - although they have a wonderful tradition here: the lunch break lasts 90 minutes, half an hour to eat, and an hour for a nap lying on a mat by your desk.

Huawei is also an example of the vast potential of China. The firm was only created in 1988, yet now less than 20 years later it has annual sales of $8.5bn, from contracts worth $11bn signed in 2006 - 65 per cent of which come from outside China. The firm has received no outside investment - just loans from Chinese banks. It is not supported by government - it is privately owned, with all the company's shares owned by 60 per cent of its employees. The largest shareholder, the chief executive and founder, owns just one per cent of the shares. How's that for socialism meets capitalism?

The campus is so vast it has a six-lane highway running through the middle of it. And in what may be seen by some as a sign of its vast ambition, it comes complete with an R&D testing centre built as a model of the White House, the US president's residence.

The list of acronyms is also a way of overcoming the language barrier - it is a common terminology understood worldwide by a company that admits it is at a disadvantage compared to India when it comes to its grasp of English.

But at its heart is a vast research and development (R&D) operation. The company spends a relatively modest 10 per cent of its revenue on R&D - comparable to Western rivals in percentage terms, often well behind in absolute terms. Yet 48 per cent of the 62,000 staff worldwide work in R&D. That's an astonishing figure.

Huawei chief marketing officer Xu Zhijun (endearingly called Eric on his business card) claims that Chinese R&D labour costs are about one-sixth of those in the US or Europe, so that investment is actually the equivalent of six times as much in a Western rival, he says.

'Huawei combines the Western professional management practices with the wisdom of our Oriental culture,' says Xu.

East Asian people use the right-side of their brain more frequently, he says, the source of their innovation.

But of course, innovation is not what China is perceived to be about by many in the West who see piracy, copyright theft and censorship. But that's a topic for the next blog entry.

The Chinese language symbol that means 'China' is a rectangle with a vertical line through the middle - apparently, this signifies China's ancient belief that the country lies at the centre of the world.

Twentieth-century politics and international relations may have shifted that global focus rather further west - certainly in the eyes of the Western powers - but the new China is rapidly moving back to the centre stage.

Computing is visiting a corner of this enormous country this week to have a glimpse of China's efforts to be the new power in technology. I'm writing this from Shenzhen, a high-rise city of 11 million people that has benefited from the Chinese government's enthusiasm for the one country-two systems policy that has seen it embrace many of the values of Western capitalism. Shenzhen has been built up as a mirror to neighbouring Hong Kong, with the former British colony as a trading post to the rest of the world.

Shenzhen is also home to Huawei, the Chinese networking and communication supplier that is our host this week. Huawei is perhaps best known in the UK as a supplier for key parts of BT's 21st Century Network plan to IP-enable its national communications backbone -  a deal that contributed in no small part to the demise of a once-great British name in telecommunications, Marconi, which was broken up when it failed to win the contracts it anticipated from BT.

Huawei is one of several Chinese tech firms looking to establish themselves as global players - Lenovo, who bought IBM's PC business, is another notable name - much the same as the leading Indian IT services companies have transformed the worldwide outsourcing market.

But China's challenges are different to India's (without even considering the truly controversial topics such as censorship and human rights, which are for another blog entry than this one).

India has had two great strengths to build on - its English language skills, and a highly-trained, high-quality resource for software development, technical support and call centre work.

Although all Chinese schoolchildren are taught English, the country does not currently have the capacity to be as fluent in the language for business as India. And while there are no doubt some excellent software resources in China, this is unlikely to be the primary route to potential success.

Here, it is all about being 'Made in China' - a manufacturing and engineering base to rival any country. On the outskirts of Shenzhen is a factory making components for Apple - it has about 60,000 production workers on the one site. Huawei itself has about 20,000 at its HQ, working mainly on R&D, sales and administration.

And India has achieved its success by trying to be like the countries it works with - doing business the way we do in Europe, UK and the US. India's heritage is one of absorbing foreign influences. China's business culture is quite different - not unlike Japan, it generally expects foreigners to adapt to Chinese ways as much as it does to theirs. There is a lucrative and growing trade in specialists advising Western firms how to do business in China.

But there is perhaps China's biggest advantage - all the big Western companies that want a part of its rapidly-developing economy and potential 1.5 billion consumers. If, say, IBM sets up a major facility in India, it is typically to recruit local staff to supply other countries. IBM and others would set up in China as much to supply China as for its low-cost resources and engineering expertise.

China no doubt has much to learn - but we have every bit as much to learn about China, and how to compete with its dramatic growth, and the impact that will have on us all.