The winter drizzle came now and then in the previous days, overshadowing Shanghai’s skyscrapers and commercial streets. But this morning sees a pleasantly sunny day. The Shanghai Exhibition Center is an even more shining point with its high-tech exhibits and social celebrities. The first Shanghai International Internet Websites Promotion Exhibition is inaugurated here, which is devoted to spurring the development of IT industry and promoting the growth of the media websites in China.
The exhibition, under the auspice of the Information Office of Shanghai People’s Government, will last three days from December 15 to 17. It attracts the attention of and enjoys the support from more than 30 leading portals, media websites and IT enterprises from home and abroad.
The exhibition will display the achievements made in Shanghai during recent years in the development of IT industry. It provides a forum for exchanging ideas among dot comers. In the mean time it was designed to promote the IT enterprises and Internet application technology and popularize Internet and IT knowledge.
During the exhibition, various activities and seminars will also be held, such as the Seminar on China Internet Enterprises Operation Solution and the China Internet Enterprises Capital Equity Fair. All these will offer participants business opportunities and information.
Gathering in the exhibition are almost all the leading media websites and portals in the country, including those of Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, eastday.com, Guangzhou Daily, and the Shanghai Jiaotong University.
One of the participants and a latecomer of the exhibition is www.h5a3.com, a large-scale media website. Though not luxuriously decorated, its booth attracts a great number of audiences and, in particular, those overseas, who are enthralled by the website’s comprehensive news coverage and extraordinary look of web pages. What makes the audiences feel amazing is that the website provides information in eight languages, and the different language versions are specially produced for various audiences. It also serves as a window ushering visitors from all over the world into China’s 5,000-year civilization and its rapid process moving toward modernization.
Shanghai, the powerhouse of traditional and modern industries in the country, is certainly a right venue to host the event. The city has been boosting its IT sector since the project to develop the city into a “cyber port” was launched several years ago. It has already established the largest ATM local broadband network in the world, the major frame of the project.
In addition, Shanghai has put the high-tech industry, especially the electronic information technology industry, on the agenda of its 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-2005). By the year of 2005, it will catch up with the developed cities in the Western countries in terms of the comprehensive capacity in information technology, thus becoming a genuine modern city boasting both sea ports and electronic ports.
(CIIC 12/15/2000)
