Chinese official urges technology ties

A visiting Chinese official said yesterday that IT industries on both sides of the Strait should "join hands" and work together to surpass the West as the world's leading provider of IT products.

Zhang Qi (張琪), a director at China's Ministry of Information Industry (中共信息產業部), told a group of Taiwanese IT businesspeople that China's home-grown technology and talent pool combined with its huge telecommunications market offered "many opportunities."

"China's fixed-line and mobile telecommunications market is already the second-largest in the world," said Zhang, who is leading a 10-member delegation of Chinese officials on an 11-day visit to Taiwan.

"Next year the number of people surfing the Internet and the scope of Net service in China will surpass that of America," she added.

Growth from January to October for China's electronics industry has reached 36 percent -- 180 percent for mobile phone production alone -- which is more than four times the growth of the nation's GNP over the same period, Zhang said.

Although crediting former leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) for implementing economic reforms in China 20 years ago, Zhang gave politics a wide berth and instead stressed the importance of the shared cultural background of Taiwan and China in fostering greater economic cooperation.

"We all speak the same language, eat the same food ... so let's join hands and use these binding ties to work together to develop the IT industry for all Chinese," Zhang said.

But Zhang denied she was in Taiwan to drum up investor sentiment, saying Taiwan investors "hardly needed her invitation to do business in China as they go there of their own accord."

This claim has fallen on deaf ears in the media, which has speculated that the delegation's visits to some of Taiwan's biggest IT moguls, including TSMC Chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀), have been to hunt for specific business deals.

Zhang said she was "very interested" in locally produced enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems and would study Taiwan's development model for small and medium enterprises in advancing China's some 5.8 million enterprises.

"If both China and Taiwan jointly employed ERP systems it would lift the competitiveness of industries on both sides of the Strait," Zhang said.

ERP software integrates each of the departments of a company onto a single computer system that serves the various needs of each department.

However some of the businessmen at the meeting yesterday had doubts about the extent to which foreign investment would be allowed in areas viewed as highly sensitive by Beijing, such as the Internet.

Sanko Lan (籃信彰), CEO of Internet B2B firm Allproducts.com, voiced concern about the pace at which the Internet market is being opened in China saying if laws prohibiting direct foreign ownership of Web firms weren't loosened soon, investors may begin to rethink their investments.

"If things don't change, investors will have to consider whether to pull their money out of the market," Lan said.

Zhang attempted to ease these fears, saying after China joins the WTO that restrictions on investing in Internet services by foreign firms would be eased.

But Lan said that even with WTO entry for China imminent, the lag between entry and actual implementation of promises to ease restrictions could leave net investors out on a limb.