The proposal, derived from a meeting of industry leaders yesterday, will be considered by both nations during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leadership meeting next month in Shanghai, said Edward Zeng, chairman and CEO of sparkice.com.

Zeng said the e-commerce industry is in a volatile stage of development that requires government support and guidance.

"China's e-commerce industry will continue to grow despite the global economic downturn, but the government will surely have a significant part in how fast and to what degree this will happen," he said.

The joint e-commerce commission would help improve relations between the Chinese and US e-business leaders and help protect online privacy and create secure identity verification methods, said J. Robert Vastine, president of US-based Coalition of Service Industries (CSI).

"We are very encouraged by the Chinese Government's positive attitude towards the development of e-commerce," he said.

Both China and the United States should focus on building infrastructure and improving business plans, he said.

The meeting in Beijing also touched on a special two-year project conducted by the Beijing-based company and CIS on US and Chinese e-commerce methods.

Chinese researchers released a book examining the differences between e-commerce in China and the United States and what role national policies have in that difference.

China's e-commerce sector has seen rapid growth since 1997. The total transaction volume of the domestic e-commerce in 2000 hit 77.2 billion yuan (US$9.3 billion), of which 390 million yuan (US$47 million) was consumer purchases. That was a 170 percent growth rate over the previous year.

Another 76.8 billion yuan (US$9.2 billion) came in the way of business-to-business (B2B) transactions.

The government has promoted both forms of commerce.

The State Economic and Trade Commission and the Ministry of Information Industry had campaigned to get 1 million small-sized businesses, 10,000 medium-sized businesses and 100 large enterprises to have Internet access by 2000.

Among the public, at least half want to buy computer equipment online, 46 percent sought cameras and 31 percent looked for household appliances, a sparkice.com survey said.

(China Daily 09/25/2001)