A special survey conducted by the State Economic and Trade Commission (SETC) shows that network safety, social business credit, laws and regulations, standardization, market scale, talents, a total of nine problems are major factors hindering China's e-commerce development.

The nine factors are: network safety, Internet infrastructure construction, social business credit problem, e-commerce related laws and regulations, standardization problem, network payment, canonization degree of enterprises on e-commerce, network market scale, IT technology and management talents.

Among the nine factors, network safety was listed as the first important factor by the surveyed. In order to guarantee safety, the most direct way for Chinese enterprises is to cut its Internet with Internet, but this operation increased workload of data transmission, thus reducing working efficiency and reaction speed.

Following the network safety are infrastructure and credit problems. In order to assure financial stability, some enterprises revoke its credit to customers, or audit or check customers by way of association system, so that they can set up their own credit management system. Some large enterprises have to set up special line or network by themselves to solve the weak infrastructure problem.

Lack of related laws, regulations, contract authentication, network payment difficulty, majority enterprises have not set strategies for developing e-commerce, they lack well-round talents who are not only proficient in IT technology, but also familiar with working operation, all these are regarded as "important factors" blocking enterprises e-commerce development.

The survey, organized by SETC, is the first comprehensive one specializing in Internet application and e-commerce development, more than 1300 back-bone enterprises covering over 30 provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions (except Tibet) with metallurgy, petroleum, textile and other industries involved participate in the survey.

(People’s Daily December 20, 2001)