Virtual China: Information Technology - Press Reviews, March 31, 1999

Weekly Press Review

March 31, 1999

China Telecom, China Unicom and China Jitong Telecommunications Co. will soon be issued formal notices allowing them to operate China's first government sanctioned IP telephone services, according to officials at China's Ministry of Information Industry. The three companies will offer IP phone service for a six month trial period, during which they will charge a fixed rate determined by the government. After the trial period, MII officials say long term licenses could be offered to three or more telecommunication companies. This new government sanctioned trial period comes in the wake of a controversial Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court decision last January that found two brothers arrested for operating their own IP Phone service had broken no laws. Days after the decision, Xu Mutu, director of the Market Administration of the Telecom Bureau, stated that "China will not open up Internet telephone and fax services for the time being" in a move that appeared designed to head off any potential wave of new IP phone services in China following the decision.

Last week, Zhang Baotai a division director at the Ministry of Information Industry, told the China Daily that China is in the process of outlining plans for the establishment of e-commerce standards. Though China is still in an "embryonic and exploratory" stage, Zhang said the MII is stepping up plans to "draft strict standards and create necessary conditions to ensure the orderly and sound growth of e-commerce." The comment came only days after analysts at the Second Roundtable on E-Commerce in Asia stressed that China faces serious technical, administrative, and legal obstacles to implementing e-commerce. In related news, Wang Dan of China Golden Medicine Net announced a pilot medical e-commerce network that will allow for the exchange of information, transaction of business, and settling of accounts for China's pharmaceutical and health services sector, a 150 billion yuan (US$18 billion) industry.

In other news, Shanghai's Higher People's Court last week rejected the appeal of former software entrepreneur Lin Hai, convicted and sentenced to 2 years in prison for selling more than 30,000 e-mail addresses to dissident Internet publication Dacankao (VIP Reference.)

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