Jiang Opens WCC, Revealing IT Development Plan

Jiang Opens WCC, Revealing IT Development Plan

Information technology will be one of the top priorities and become a driving force in China's economic development, President Jiang Zemin said on the opening ceremony of the 16th World Computer Congress (WCC) on Monday.

This is the first time for China to host the biannual event since 1959, when WCC made debut in Paris. WCC was called the Olympic Games for IT industry.

"The technology world is facing a thorough revolution while information technology and gene will become flagships in the revolution," said Jiang.

He said digitalization will become drive engine in the process.

As former Minister of the Electronic Ministry, the predecessor of the present Ministry of Information Industry, Jiang said he read some of the 1,500 theses for the congress although his time is very limited.

More than 2,000 IT experts and business leaders worldwide were attracted to Beijing by the event and 1,500 theses will be released and discussed during the conference which will be held from Monday to Friday.

"The physical resources are very limited while information resources will be more and more important," said Jiang.

Electronic commerce, remote medicare and education will efficiently drive China's economic and social development, he said.

"The hardware sector should be integrated with the software sector like the convergence of traditional industries with the information network technologies," said Jiang.

As an electronic engineer years ago, the President showed great interest in the latest network technologies.

But Jiang also figured out that the technology gap between the developed countries and the developing countries is widening.

If the trend continues, the differences between developed and developing countries will be even bigger.

"The developed countries have the duty to help the developing ones to narrow the digital gap," he said.

Jiang also warned that Internet also contains some garbage like hacker, privacy violating, misleading information and security problems.

He called on the international community to quicken the progress to launch an international Internet convention to better serve and safeguard the Internet surfers.

Peter Bollerslev, president of one of the organizers International Federation for Information Processing, said this is the first time in 40 years that WCC was held in a developing country.

"This is a clear commitment of the international community for China's computing power," he said.

Twelve keynote speeches were made Monday from top executives of Motorola, IBM, PCCW, Legend and Founder.

Besides the five-day keynote speeches in the Beijing International Conventional Centre, an exhibition from Tuesday through Thursday will showcase the recent Internet technologies.