Top foreign trade official Shi Guangsheng said at Friday's APEC symposium on e-commerce and paperless trading that China has formulated code protocols for all Chinese enterprises engaged in foreign trade business and has developed a security authentication system for the country's e-commerce information.

In addition, China will further promote international e-commerce in a bid to facilitate 70 percent of the Chinese trading companies to put their international transactions online by 2005, Shi said.

He expressed confidence that in five years China will see a boom in e-commerce applications, which will have "a far-reaching effect" on the nation's economy.

Shi called on developed APEC member economies to give more support to the developing economies and called for "enhanced dialogue and interaction between governments and enterprises," so that all members can grow and prosper in the telecommunications and information sectors.

Up to December 31, 2000, 265,000 Chinese websites and 8.92 million Internet-accessible computers were available to the 22.5 million Internet users in China.

APEC has been engaged in promoting regional e-commerce development since 1997. A blueprint was passed at its ministerial-level meeting in 1998, setting the goals for developed member economies to realize paperless trading by 2005 and for developing members, by 2010.

(People's Daily 02/09/2001)