“When China awakes, the world will tremble,” Napoleon once admonished. Today, from a purely economic standpoint, it can only be said that he was right. And last spring, in order to witness first-hand the evolution of this future leading world economic power, some twenty students from the École Polytechnique de Montréal spent three weeks in China as part of the Poly-Chine 2005 mission. Concrete examples of dynamism, commitment and openness to the world, the future engineers took part in the project for a period of two years. On the programme: logistics, financing and the drawing up of various documents, as well as introductory courses in Mandarin and on local culture. During their stay, they visited 35 institutions and businesses, and were able, on their return, to prepare and publish a comparable analysis with Québec focusing mainly on information technologies, transportation, biotechnology, the use of natural resources and the environment. But above all, the Polytechnique’s first mission on Chinese soil raised awareness among the leaders of tomorrow of the issue of global competition and the importance of technological innovation for Québec in the new world economy