China's industry and economy has grown tremendously over the past few years. What kind of role has the NTT Group played in this development?

Masato Inaba
Chief Representative in China NTT

Zhang Jianming
President & CEO NTT Communications China

Takuya Nakagawa
President & CEO Cosmos Posts and Telecommunications International Leasing

Inaba (NTT) China's recent rapid economic and industrial growth wouldn't have been possible without the development of its ICT infrastructure and the spread of the Internet and mobile phone networks. The NTT Group has been doing business in China for about 30 years, and I feel that we've played a major role in the development of the country's ICT environment. How do the rest of you feel from the perspective of your respective group companies?

Zhang Jianming (NTT Communications China) NTT Communications China has helped develop China's business environment and improve its investment environment through providing system integration solutions and Internet related ICT services for Chinese as well as Japanese and other foreign-owned companies.
We also work with other NTT Group companies such as NTT FACILITIES CHINA and DOCOMO China to provide local Chinese companies with technical assistance. For example, we've provided consulting services to local telecommunications carriers for various products including the construction of FTTH networks and data centers. I think that endeavors like these have helped raise the level of ICT services across China as a whole.

Kanda (NTT DATA) NTT DATA has also helped to build China's ICT infrastructure, for example by building and operating the backbone systems for the People's Bank of China and forerunner of the Postal Savings Bank of China in the 1990s. More recently, we've been focusing on doing business with Chinese companies, as well as handling Japanese offshore business and ICT outsourcing business for Japanese companies operating in China.

Oishi (NTT Advanced Technology) We've been providing Chinese optical communications equipment makers with optic fiber materials through local agents for over ten years now. I think we've been able to contribute indirectly through these activities to the development of China's communications equipment industry and to bridging digital divides in China.

Nakagawa (CPTL) Our role is to support financial aspects of the activities that you've all been talking about up to now. Our parent company, NTT FINANCE, gets a very high rating from credit rating companies, and we help China to develop by leveraging that creditworthiness to procure funds at low costs to finance communications and postal service projects in China.

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China's economy continues to grow briskly, but the country also faces issues such as traffic congestion, environmental problems and growing income disparities. How do you think the NTT Group can help to address these issues?

Masayuki Honma
President & CEO DOCOMO China

Shoichi Yamada
President & CEO NTT FACILITIES CHINA

Inaba Our Energy and Environment Systems Laboratories (NTT EESL) is conducting research in technologies that leverage ICT to reduce environmental impacts. NTT EESL has cooperated in monitoring Beijing's atmospheric pollution, and when the Beijing Olympics took place in 2008, we fitted a stadium with a lighting system that makes use of solar power. We've been actively helping China to reduce environmental impacts through these and various other activities. We've also been working with group companies on the development of "smart communities" as the building blocks of the low carbon society of the future, and we plan to do similar things in China.

Honma (DOCOMO China) As an initiative connected to the smart communities of the future, DOCOMO China is participating in a closed loop social infrastructure construction pilot project being implemented by the Japanese government's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) in the city of Gongqingcheng in Jiangxi Province.
The project aims to reduce environmental impacts through deploying electric buses that don't emit CO₂. We'll be helping with the building of a bus operation information system that informs the public of bus location, waiting time and other information through smartphones and digital signage.

Kanda NTT DATA (China) is also participating in a NEDO-backed pilot project in Beijing to test a new traffic system. The experiment involves fitting 12,000 cars in Beijing with sensors to gather data on geographical position, speed, accelerator and brake use and such like. The data will be analyzed to explore ways of preventing traffic jams and promoting eco-driving.

Yamada (NTT FACILITIES CHINA) Data center construction is booming in China at the moment, but data centers are very energy hungry, and so making them more energy-efficient is an urgent issue. At NTT FACILITIES CHINA, we're accordingly leveraging the abundance of technology and expertise that we've built up in Japan in, say, efficient air conditioning control systems and such like to provide design and technical consulting services for building energy-efficient data centers. Going forward, we're also planning to work with NTT EESL to deploy efficient high voltage direct current (HVDC) power supply systems.

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As China has become increasingly consumer-oriented, its people are showing more concern over safety in society. What are your views on the role of the NTT Group in this area?

Fumio Kanda
Senior Vice President, NTT DATA Deputy Chair & CEO, NTT DATA (China)

Mamoru Oishi
Chief Representative, Shanghai Rep. Office NTT Advanced Technology

Kanda A great many incidents of bridges suddenly collapsing as a result of aging have occurred in the past ten years in China, making it a serious social issue here. At NTT DATA China, we're participating in a project to equip bridges with sensors to monitor aging and risk of collapse so as to prevent such disasters from happening. We're conducting field trials that make use of the latest data analysis technologies to analyze the huge amounts of data that get sent to us, and we're now preparing to operate a bridge monitoring system in Jilin Province.

Honma I think that we can leverage DOCOMO China's core competence of mobile technology to contribute to the creation of a safe and secure society in China in two key areas over the long term. One of those is traceability systems to ensure the safety of foods and pharmaceuticals. The second is welfare-related applications. China is destined to follow in Japan's footsteps to become an increasingly aging society with more and more old people living on their own. As such, I can see great potential demand for remote monitoring services that use sensors and mobile communications to keep an eye on the well-being of elderly people.

Oishi We participated in a project in Chile to build a communications system for linking people at the working faces of mines with mine management offices. I'd like to apply the knowledge we gained there to China too, to help enhance the safety of operations in coal mines and other mining industries here.

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What are you doing to tackle issues such as income disparity and large-scale disasters?

Nelly Zhang
Country Sr. Hr Manager Dimension Data

Inaba These are not problems that the NTT Group can resolve on its own, but we're all living here in China, and I think it's important for us to do our utmost to help out as a corporate citizen.

Nelly Zhang (Dimension Data) At Dimension Data China, we're actively supporting projects of charities that address poverty in the Asia Pacific region. Within China too, we're working with China Charity Federation to provide equipment and learning materials to junior high schools, and we're also paying the school fees of 25 junior high school students from households facing poverty in Hebei Province for three years from 2012. Another thing we're doing is supporting schools for the children of migrant workers from the countryside in large cities through donations and visits by employees.

Kanda NTT DATA (China) employees also have a keen awareness of the importance of contributing to society, and they start collecting money to help disaster victims almost as soon as they hear news about a disaster. They did so after last year's Great East Japan Earthquake, and again this year when Beijing was hit by torrential downpours and flooding in July. We're really proud of this kind of corporate culture.

Zhang Jianming NTT Communications China employees have also long collected donations voluntarily for such causes. The company too has itself started to make contributions recently, donating about 300,000 yuan since last year to disaster zones and charity organizations.

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China has the world's largest population. In this sense too, couldn't the NTT Group be seen as contributing to Chinese society through its many different activities by hiring and training local people and such like?

Inaba Yes, indeed. The NTT Group currently has over 70 sites in 23 cities in China, and employs close to 10,000 people in China.

Kanda NTT DATA (China) employs about 4,000 people if you count our 13 key group companies.

Inaba Most of these people are local Chinese, but we also have people from Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the USA and other countries as well as, of course, Japan. We have a very cosmopolitan workforce, and we seek to drive our creativity through leveraging this diversity.

Zhang Jianming It's also important to localize management too by appointing locally hired employees to positions of responsibility according to their abilities and suitability. NTT Communications China used to be managed largely by people posted here from Japan, but in recent years, we've been sending gifted Chinese employees to Japan to work in the NTT Group there, and appointing these people to managerial positions here once they've gained experience in Japan has become the norm. Currently, over 70% of our managers and above, including myself, are local hires, and I think that this kind of training and hiring of local people definitely contributes to society.

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What do you think the NTT Group needs to do to contribute even further to Chinese society moving forward?

Oishi It's of course important for individual group companies to involve themselves in business that is valuable to society, but I think it's also important for the NTT Group to make maximum use of the synergy that can be generated between group companies to come up with valuable solutions that other business groups are unable to provide.

Yamada Group companies have always worked together on various projects, but I'd agree that we need to talk even more often with each other and actively create possibilities for new kinds of cooperation. For example, we handle things like car park management systems as part of our building management solutions business, and I'm sure that if we made effective use of the technologies of group companies, we could probably create even more convenient and energyefficient systems.

Honma Smart communities designed for maximum energy efficiency and comfort are, I think, another good example of a field in which the NTT Group could make the most of its collective strengths. By achieving success with such cutting-edge projects, the NTT Group should be able to boost its stature and worth in Chinese society.

Nakagawa CPTL has won the trust of China's postal services, telecommunications and financial services industriesand built up an extensive network of connections through its business. I think we could put this trust and these connections to use by serving as a bridge between group companies and China's business and industry to contribute as the NTT Group to projects of great value to society, such as providing China with more advanced financial systems or more efficient logistics.

Nelly Zhang To generate more synergy, I think that we should think along the lines of launching experimental projects under NTT Corporation's leadership, using them to develop better, more collaborative processes between group companies. As a human resources manager, I'd very much welcome the opportunity to participate in events aimed at bringing people from different group companies together, or groupwide citizenship activities.

Inaba I too want to raise the level of information sharing and networking between all of us in the NTT Group working here in China, much as you've all suggested. We aim to work with you to drive collaboration within the Group in China, share the fruits of our R&D with China, build new business models for Asia, andthrough these endeavors, make a bigger contribution to the sustained development of Chinese society.

Thank you all very much for sparing the time to share your valuable thoughts today.

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