Has E-commerce Spring Arrived in China?Has E-commerce arrived in China? The latest issue of the country's most authoritative news weekly " Outlook" provides some answers.Despite of the cold spring of this year, E-commerce has been very hot in the Chinese capital of Beijing, with one meeting after another devoted to the topic. Some people have even gone so far as to acclaim that the spring of China's E-commerce has already arrived, said an article in the May 1 issue of the magazine, which is to hit newsstands early next week. The article related that over the past two years, Internet fever in China has shifted from pursuance of portals, to hits and to E-commerce of the present. More and more companies have announced their plans to plunge into the E-commerce. So far, the number of Chinese companies that intend to do business-to-commerce (B-to-C) on the Internet have grown to over 500 from about 100 in early 1999. At the Fourth China International E-commerce Summit held in Beijing recently, Song Ling, director of the Information Promotion Department of the Ministry of Information Industry, poured some cold water on the B-to-C fever. Chinese E-commerce companies should, first of all, focus their capital and personnel on the business-to-business, the official said. The view was shared by some companies, since the business-to- business (B-to-B) style of E-commerce will avoid the existing bottlenecks of Internet authentication, payment and delivery. The article noted that the current fever of E-commerce in China is, to a large extent, limited to the academic circles of the country. Official statistics suggested that only about one in a thousand Chinese enterprises have gone onto the Internet and the number of domain names owned by businesses have grown to only 48,000. According to officials from the Ministry of Information Industry, the E-commerce in China can only be said to have entered into a stage of preliminary development, while problems such as poor awareness of the importance of E-commerce, lack of business and legal infrastructures permeate. The article held that it is imperative for the government to make clear its intentions as soon as possible as to how the E- commerce should develop, if E-commerce is to grow in the country. The government should also put into place laws and regulations on how E-commerce is to be taxed, the criteria of on-line payment and delivery, as well as the security of information and the Internet, the article said. |
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