The six-day event, which opened on Saturday in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, has attracted 1,124 investment institutions from home and abroad, according to the statistics from the organizing committee.

They include a group of world leading venture capital companies - such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Merrill Lynch - as well as 136 local venture capital firms and hundreds of Chinese investment groups.

The majority is eying projects involving information technology and bio-pharmaceutical industries.

A survey conducted by the organizing committee showed that 90 per cent of the investors want to pool money in the telecommunications, software, Internet technology and semi-conductor sectors.

Yu Youjun, mayor of Shenzhen, said investors seem to prefer creative and self-developed technologies that come with intellectual property rights and have huge market potential.

Analysts say that universities, research institutions and some small and medium-sized enterprises have advantages when it comes to meeting such requirements.

Patrick J. McGovern, chairman of the board of US-based International Data Group (IDG), told China Daily that he has taken part in the annual high-tech fair four times and has signed a series of venture capital agreements with Chinese high-tech operators since 1998, when the event was first held.

That year IDG started a seven-year US$1 billion programme to invest in small and medium-sized high-tech companies in China.

So far, the internationally known venture capital company has injected US$250 million into 120 high-tech projects and exited from 30 of them successfully.

"We cover lots of sectors, such as media, software, e-business and medicine," said McGovern.

Besides venture capital, the Chinese Government has funded high-tech change-over programmes in over 1,000 Chinese firms over the past four to five years.

These firms specialize in such areas as telecommunications, electronics, communication, medicine, environmental protection, new materials, bio-technology and the development of western China. They are expected to increase their output by more than 200 billion yuan (US$24 billion) this year as a result of their switch to high-tech and boost their profits by 38 billion yuan (US$4.6 billion).

On the first day of the event, 13 contracts involving 3.93 billion yuan (US$473.5 million) were signed, four of which were Sino-foreign co-operative ventures.

(China Daily October 14, 2002)