Chinese Vice-Minister of Finance Jin Liqun said efforts were being made to optimize the sector's investment climate including clarifying property rights and improving the legal and administrative environment.

Brian Zhang, general manager of the US-based Walden International, said as China boasted abundant human resources and a relatively good manufacturing industry, its information industry had huge development potential.

To date, many heavyweight multinationals specializing in information technology including Microsoft, Siemens and Philips have revealed their ambitions for a bigger presence in China by either expanding their production scale or strengthening marketing and distribution.

Delegates at the symposium in the southwest China municipality said they believed the introduction of private capital would accelerate the sector's development.

Bruno Lanvin, manager of the Information for Development (infoDev) of the World Bank Group, said, "It is very common in western countries for private enterprises to invest in the industry of information and communication technologies."

Given China's central and local governments were ready to make preferential policies, the process would be much easier and China would benefit a lot by encouraging private enterprises to do so, he said.

"The World Bank Group takes a positive attitude to China's decision. We plan to carry out more projects in China in this field," he said.

(People's Daily December 12, 2002)