Singapore Businesses Urged to Tap Chinese Computing Potential

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, November 28, 2001

Singapore Businesses Urged to Tap Chinese Computing Potential

A newly appointed senior official of Singapore has urged his country's businesses "to tap into the huge potential for Chinese computing".

A newly appointed senior official of Singapore has urged his country's businesses "to tap into the huge potential for Chinese computing".

Khaw Boon Wan, who was appointed Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts on November 17, made the statement while speaking at the opening of the international conference on Chinese computing Tuesday.

The next big Internet boom is in China, and computing is one of many areas in which Singapore can hope to be a major player, Khaw said, asking businesses to surface issues early so that the government could remove the roadblocks in the way.

China's opening up to the world 20 years ago and the rise of the Internet have combined to guarantee a global role for Chinese computing and progress has been especially rapid in the hardware, software and commercial areas, he added.

Khaw pointed out that there is a bright future for the Chinese computing industry as full development of Chinese computing has yet to run its course, noting that millions of Chinese are crossing the digital divide every year while many more millions are still on the other side of the divide, whether in business or at homes.

He highlighted standardization of Chinese character sets, development of machine translation capabilities and more industry- relevant research exchanges among academies in the Chinese mainland, Singapore, Hong Kong, the U.S. and other major Chinese- speaking communities as future direction for speeding up development of Chinese computing.

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