China Focusing on Infrastructure for E-Commerce

China is focusing on building its infrastructure network for the booming electronic commerce, as many state-owned and other enterprises plan to invest more into the field.

China Telecom, the state's top runner of telecommunications business, has established a nationwide cable network which would be the backbone of e-commerce in the coming years, Yang Baosheng, deputy chief of China Telecom's Data Communication Bureau, said Saturday.

China Telecom completed expansion of its trunk web, Chinanet, with the an average band of 800 megabits per second and two megabits per second in the Internet portal, Yang said at a specific forum of the 5th China International Electronic Commerce Summit.

Meanwhile, the state-owned company helps government bodies and big enterprises construct their own Intranets and provides them with high-standard dialing business.

"Electronic commerce is a giant system which needs efforts from all trades," Yang said, stressing that cooperation should be the top priority.

China Telecom is now cooperating with the customs and taxation, securities and transportation departments to develop technological application.

Nearly 100,000 businesses in China now use online network for customs declaration, which help the government reap an additional 70 billion yuan (8.43 billion U.S. dollars) in customs duties.

With about 1.5 million e-commerce clients, China Telecom annually earns more than 80 million yuan from this business, Yang said.

Meanwhile, other enterprises are calling for the employment of the satellite network to develop e-commerce, saying that the satellite network is cheaper and more effective than underground or submarine cables.

Qi Caiyun, president of Satellite Network Technology Company under Oriental Group, said that the multiple-way, wide-band and high-fidelity digital exchange by means of satellite telecommunications is very useful at modern time.

As for some remote areas where there is a varied topography, digital exchange through satellite network might be the best choice, Qi said.

Professor Wang Kehong at Qinghua University paid more attention to development of software for electronic commerce.

The computer sciences department at Qinghua has successfully developed electronic forms for all various of electronic commerce, which the professor said is indispensable for anyone engaged in e- commerce.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange uses one of the electronic forms to publicize information on listed companies everyday.






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