Participation in China's Software Development WelcomedChina welcomes foreign-funded enterprises to set up factories and development centers in China and hopes overseas students will participate in the development of China's software industry, said Qu Weizhi, vice-minister of Information Industry, at the opening ceremony of China's first "Software Day" activity held in Beijing Thursday.Qu said the preferential policies concerning software enterprises published by the Chinese government last year are not only applicable to domestic software enterprises, but also valid for the foreign-funded enterprises that are engaged in software industry in China. As the focus and strategic commanding height of information industry, China's software sector is in a crucial stage for further development and growth, Qu said, the industry will have an important opportunity for developing by leaps and bounds in the coming 5 to 10 years. Therefore, she called on overseas students to grasp the opportunities for starting up new undertakings and come back to set up their medium and small enterprises in China. Chen Chong, deputy director of the Department of Electronics and IT Products under the Ministry of Information Industry, also pointed out at the opening ceremony that in the past five years, the output value of China's software industry has surged from 6.8 billion yuan to over 23 billion yuan, representing an average annual growth of 27.6 percent. Chen revealed that the general scale of China's software industry increased by 56 percent in the first quarter of this year, reporting the quickest development among all the electronics and IT products. However, Chen also expressed that since China's software industry got off to a later start, its general level is still in the primary stage of development. Most of the software enterprises are small and vulnerable to risks. It lacks obviously behind its counterparts in the developed countries and, to some extent, even behind those in some developing countries. He called for increasing support of fund-raising channels for software enterprises, setting up the growth enterprises market (GEM) as soon as possible, intensifying the protection of intellectual property and strengthening international competitiveness in management and quality guarantee, so as to quicken the development of China's software industry. By PD Online Staff Du Minghua |
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