Roundup: Bright Future for China's Internet Sector

The development of Internet sector will be an important step for China in achieving stable economic development in the 21st century, Li Dongsheng, president of the TCL Group, a leading consumer electronics manufacturer,said in Shenzhen Sunday.

In addressing the on-going Second Shenzhen High-Tech Fair, Li said that China's Internet-related business is expected to flourish in the new century.

Li said, China lags behind developed countries in information technology and Internet development, adding that China only has less than 20 million Internet users compared with almost 300 million users worldwide.

China's Internet-related business has been volatile in the past two years, and many websites now face the question of "to be or not to be."

However, experts at the on-going high-tech fair said that this is not a setback to China's Net business, but shows that the development of the business is rational.

Li Ying, an official with the Ministry of Information Industry,said that China has invested eight billion yuan in the development of Internet services. The investment "is highly efficient," the official said.

Li predicted that in the coming years, a large amount of foreign venture capital will flow into China's Internet businesses. So far, China has attracted one billion U.S. dollars of foreign venture capital in the Net sector, but 90 percent of the venture capital investors of the United States are yet to arrive in China.

Li said, of the one billion U.S. dollar domestic venture capital, only 10 percent has been used.

The current high-tech fair has attracted a dozen world renowned information technology (IT) companies, venture capital investors and websites, such as Dell, Intel and Motorola. They spoke highly of the development of China's Internet sector, and many of them intend to cooperate with their Chinese counterparts.

At the same time, many Chinese IT enterprises, such as Legend and Langchao, have also been involved in Internet-related business, and have set up their own multimedia and IT centers.

It is estimated that China's e-business transaction volume will increase from the current 40 million U.S. dollars to 3.8 billion U.S. dollars annually by the year 2003.

Robert William Fogel, a winner of the 1993 Nobel Economics Prize, said that the Internet-related business is a driving force of world economic development, and plays a very important role in the development of the Chinese economy.

He said, the development of China's Internet business will add more power to the world economy in the early 21st century.



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