Chen Chong, president of the China Software Industry Association, said software and related services would be worth 250billion yuan (30 billion US dollars) in China by 2005.

If the country's ambitious plan could be realized, Chinese software businesses would hold over 60 percent of the domestic market and post exports of three billion dollars annually, said Chen at a Sino-Japanese information services forum in Dalian, a coastal city in northeast China's Liaoning Province.

To attain its goal, China would focus its efforts on basic software and critical technologies, business management and social services software, E-commerce engineering and key technologies, educational and home software and infrastructure building.

The Chinese government would continue the favorable environment so that its software industry could attain a hop-skip-and-jump style growth, said Chen, who is also deputy director of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry Department of Electronic Information Products.

China's software industry has grown rapidly in recent years. Sales rose 38.7 percent to 33 billion yuan (3.98 billion dollars) in 2001.

The country has over 10,000 businesses and 400,000 people engaged in software and related services.

By the end of last year, 1,023 higher education institutions inChina had opened computer or software departments, recruiting a total of 586,000 students.

The main challenges facing China's software industry included low domestic market share, fund shortage, small and uncompetitive enterprises, poor innovative ability, and insufficient protection of intellectual property rights, Chen said.

(Xinhua News Agency July 30, 2002)