Yang Weidong, secretary-general of the association, called the change a new trend in e-commerce.

The e-commerce summit has become the largest and the most impressive one in the country in this field. The Construction Bank of China, the China Oil and Petroleum Corporation and some other traditional companies will boast the largest and best-positioned exhibition area and their official will speak at the summit.

Yang noted that over the past two years, traditional companies which had been standing by began to pay attention to e-commerce. They set up websites of their own and even began to do business on-line.

Some companies are now enjoying the fruits. In 2000, the Merchants Bank of China generated a transaction volume of 590 billion yuan through on-line banking.

In contrast, the dot.coms, which cut smart figures in the latest two summits, are now quieting down in shadows. Many CEOs of dot.coms plan to be listeners this time.

Yang is one of the earliest who brought up the concept of e- commerce in China and experienced every pace of the gradual development of e-commerce in the country.

"When the summit was held for the first time in 1997 in Suzhou, we had only about 100 attendants, and the concept was only used by IT experts. But last year we had more than 90,000 visitors at the summit."

Statistics show that China has set up 1,500 e-commerce websites so far, and its business volume reached 77.16 billion yuan in 2000, including 390 million yuan from Business to Consumer (BtoC) transaction and 76.77 billion yuan from Business to Business (BtoB) transaction.

Citing e-commerce as business through electronic facilities, Yang praised industries such as securities, banking, and civil aviation as the leaders in the utilization of new technology.

He admitted that China's e-commerce development is still in the preliminary stage, facing drawbacks in respect to security, infrastructure and transaction.

China has paid great attention to the development of e-commerce and has put the building of an electronic certification system and modern payment system high on its plan for the next five years.

(Xinhua 04/04/2001)