Shanghai, China's business-intensive city Wednesday finished the cyberportal backbone project, a move to push itself further into the Internet-based economy.

"Shanghai is set to maintain its pioneering position among its sister provinces after completing the project," said Chen Liangyu, executive vice-mayor of the city.

Chen said the hardware hook-up will power the city's information technology and businesses that depend on the growth of IT industries. Shanghai's IT outcome was worth more than 90 billion yuan (U$10.86 billion) in 1999 and is expected to grow at an annual rate of more than 10 per cent in the following years.

The backbone will connect the Shanghai broadband IP network project and a reshuffled Shanghai Cable TV network plus the hardware of Shanghai Telecom and the China Unicom Shanghai Branch.

This set-up is the expectation of Fan Xiping, vice-president of the Shanghai National Economy & Society Informationization Office, a municipal government department developing the information industry.

Fan added that the project will also include a broadband information system that can exchange information among local networks and the Shanghai supercomputing centre.

Also on the agenda of the backbone project would be the government departments online services, long-distance education, a medical diagnosis service and a digital library.

"As the city's No 1 project in 2000, the backbone can also help improve the investment environment, accelerating changes in traditional industries and trigger domestic consumption and technical innovation," said Chen.

Shanghai began working on the cyberportal project in July 1996. To date it has facilitated commercial ATMs, data exchanges for international trade, a local community service network and the golden card project - a link between credit cards and ATMs.