International high technology firms and venture capitalists are trying to tap the booming Chinese market -- despite the economic downturn in other areas -- at the on-going China Hi-Tech Fair 2002 in Shenzhen.

"We came here to look for strategic partners and distributors for our service," said Richard B. Lapin, chief financial officer of a US mobile phone short message service provider attending the fair for the first time.

"We had spent nearly a year finding venture capital and carriers in the United States, but had not succeeded and it only took five months for us to find a carrier in China.

"We hope to find venture capital after a meeting here tomorrow," Richard said.

Overseas hi-tech companies and investors are looking to the Chinese market due to the depressed US economy and the stricken European and US telecommunications markets.

Nearly 3,700 companies and institutions, 1,124 investors, including 260 overseas investors, from China and 40 other countries and regions are participating in the fair.

Government representatives from six nations, including Denmark, India, Israel and Japan, led domestic enterprises and institutions to the fair for the first time.

Liu Xiaomei, a China affairs executive with American Appraisal Hong Kong Limited, an intermediary agency, said her company had noted the increasing number of China-foreign joint ventures in hi-tech fields.

More than 61 percent of institutional investors throughout the world invested in China's mainland in the first half of 2002, a Hong Kong scholar said on an investment forum.

An official with the State Development Planning Commission of China said the nation was to draft a regulation to promote the development of venture investment in China.

Forty overseas institutional investors and representatives of chambers of commerce took part in an international investment summit meeting held Sunday.

( October 15, 2002)