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B2B: To Be or Not to Be
Zhou Haidong, a customer manager for a international trading website company, is often seen in China with a notebook computer and a digital camera shuttling back and forth among cities and villages. His task is to talk to local entrepreneurs and show them what the Internet and e-business could bring for them.
"My colleagues and I are like e-missionaries preaching the `new economy,'" said Zhou, who is in his 30s and works at the Tianjin Office of Global Sources, a business to business(B2B) website engaged to international trade.
The new economy is based on the Internet and technological innovation that has helped the growth of the economy in his home country, the United States. It means new business opportunities to Zhou and other e-missionaries like him.
Zhou and his colleagues have been trying to convince local people who are unfamiliar with the Internet through demonstrations. He has been trying to tell them the Internet is a rare bridge linking their remote towns with the outside world.
The e-missionaries have to repeatedly tell the customers that online trading will save 85 percent of the cost compared with traditional trading. The more important thing is that they will then be able to play in the international arena.
"It's no easy job," he admitted. "Usually these entrepreneurs are ambitious to explore the market, but they know little about e-business."
While an increasing number of urban youngsters are turning themselves into "netizens,"(a citizen of the net) most Chinese have never had access to the Internet.
It seems that the new Internet vocabulary, using words like ".com," "online," "website," and "e-mail", has flooded into the lives of Chinese people overnight. From time to time, people are reminded of the cyber age by the dazzling ads of the online businesses painted on buses and in subway stations.
Figures are convincing. According to an estimation by the Ministry of Information Industry, China's e-business trade volume will hit 800 million yuan (96.4 million U.S. dollars) at the end of this year and will reach 20 billion (2.4 billion U.S. dollars) by the year 2002.
E-business is like a pizza pie just out of the oven, people can 't wait to have a piece of it, but some are hesitant.
A survey by the State Economic and Trade Commission among 300 leading Chinese enterprises showed that 70 percent of them have yet to fully make use of the Internet. All that they have done so far was to establish a homepage and register an e-mail address.
Zhang Chaoyang, president of Sohu company, said traditional businesses in China are still not motivated enough to embrace the cyber age.
He warned that they would have to cross swords with their major competitors from abroad once China gains access to the World Trade Organization (WTO). There will be no way out for the traditional businesses if they are still taking a "wait and see" attitude towards the growing e-business.
Some experts even believed that after trade barriers disappear along with China's entry into the WTO, e-business is likely to emerge as a new trade barrier for those who have not yet converted.
They suggest that all traditional businesses take e-business as a way to integrate into the 'new economy', which will break down the traditional economic barriers that have been set up in different parts of the world.
The cyber-based 'New Economy Age' is a time that players are given a chance to reshuffle the cards. China has been left behind in some areas since the first industrial revolution. The 'new economy' enables China to begin the economic race at the same starting point with other countries.
Lin Zongtang, chairman of China Industrial Economics Association, pointed out that the Internet has provided the traditional industries in China with the possibility of cutting management costs and increasing market share by making use of resources around the globe.
"The Internet is a high-powered engine which can lead a business and even a country to the expressway of development," said Zhou.
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