Chinese electronics and IT manufacturers need to enhance intellectual property rights (IPR) and optimize their products structure to broaden international markets, since most of their core technologies and parts still rely on imports.

The Chinese government will give more support to enterprises focusing on IPR establishment and technology creation, Lou Qinjian, vice-minister of the Ministry of Information Industry, said on Friday at the China International Consumer Electronics Show in east China's Shandong Province.

The vice-minister said the domestic electronics and IT sector has developed rapidly in recent years as competition in the sector improved.

Statistics show that the annual research and development spending of the top 100 firms last year was 3.56 billion yuan (US$445 million), accounting for 3.7 percent of total revenue.

Lou called for domestic electronics and IT firms to redouble their efforts in innovation, especially in setting technology standards, to improve competitiveness.

The total revenue of China's electronics and information industry was 3.84 trillion yuan (US$480 billion) last year, a 28.4 percent increase year-on-year.

Exports were worth US$268.3 billion, more than one-tenth of the world's total. Two companies in the sector have an annual sales value surpassing 100 billion yuan (US$12.5 billion) each, while more than 20 have surpassed 10 billion yuan (US$1.25 billion) each.

It is estimated that China's electronics and IT market will hit 7 trillion yuan (US$870 billion) per year by 2010.

"Meanwhile, consumer electronics have become the major business of the whole Chinese electronics and IT sector," Lou said.

In the first half of this year China exported 156 million mobile phones, 35.5 million digital cameras and 22.8 million colour TVs.

"For the consumer electronics area, supporting the development of liquid crystal display TVs (LCD TV) is absolutely the emphasis," Lou said.

He said China is now the largest producer of TV sets in the world, but the LCD TVs made elsewhere are in high demand, pushing Chinese manufacturers to make a shift.

China will encourage its TV makers to upgrade their production using digital and advanced display technologies and speed up manufacturing of new generation TVs such as plasma display panel TVs and LCD TVs.

(China Daily July 8, 2006)