Infosys Technologies plans to hire 6,000 software programmers in China to manage what the Indian company says will be large and sustained demand for its technology services.

Many will be based at a $15m software development centre to be built on a 100,000 sq metre site in Hangzhou near Shanghai, where Infosys is also investing $10m to expand another facility.

Infosys' move is the boldest recruitment drive yet by an Indian IT company in China, whose premier, Wen Jiabao, during a visit to Bangalore in April, expressed admiration for the country's rise as a commercially successful technology power.

Software executives in Bangalore say China's cultivation of Indian IT was also designed to acquire the skills to replicate India's global IT model in China.

The push by Indian companies into China's $30bn technology services industry, which is slightly bigger than India's, is at an early stage. But the widening of bilateral ties in the technology sector contrasts with continuing nervousness within the political and security establishment in New Delhi.

Those fears emerged at a meeting of senior Indian civil servants on July 25, when one security official expressed serious concern about the presence in India of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer. The minutes of the meeting were obtained by the Financial Times.

Infosys, which already employs 290 programmers in China, will add 1,750 staff by 2007. The Hangzhou centre will have a capacity for 6,000.