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To: findstock who wrote (40017)	3/29/2000 3:28:00 PM
From: Bidder	Respond to of 150070

From RB Board:Copied from another board:China Plans Internet Drive China Plans Internet Drive BEIJING (AP) - Wednesday March 29 3:46 AM ET China plans a campaign to bring industries, government offices and households online as part of a national strategy to make the Internet a more powerful engine for economic growth. Ministry of Information Industry Wu Jichuan told a conference in Beijing that his agency intends to ``rejuvenate' the digital electronics sector and do more to promote communications and software businesses, the official newspaper China Daily reported Wednesday. With the information industry growing at an annual rate of 20 percent - almost three times the 7 percent growth rate of the overall economy - China needs to readjust its economic structure to take advantage of that dynamism, it cited Wu as saying. At the same time, China is struggling to set up a regulatory system and laws to govern the fast-growing industry. The number of Internet users in China has been doubling every six months for the past two years, rising to 8.9 million people by the end of 1999. Courts are handling a growing number of cases involving disputes over the Internet, such as copyright infringements and plagiarism of home pages, the newspaper said in a separate report. In one typical case, six prominent authors sued a Web site for publishing their novels without authorization. The report noted that Web-related cases were a ``headache' for the courts because there are no concrete statutes on Internet use. The push to bring the country online also has been hampered by a lack of financing and support for Internet-related companies, as well as the government's own ambivalence over the hard-to-control industry. The government recently has tried to extend controls over Web sites, ordering Internet content providers, which have enjoyed far greater freedom than the state-controlled conventional media, to obtain licenses. At a time when major portals are looking overseas for the financing they have trouble raising back home, regulators are enforcing more strictly than before rules against foreign investment in Internet firms. Wu told the same conference that domestic Internet companies would be required to spin off all assets and operations related to content services in order to list overseas, a ministry official said. The official declined to elaborate. But the official newspaper China Securities News noted that Wu hinted that China might change those restrictions once it gains membership in the World Trade Organization. Wu did not specify how the policy would affect Internet companies incorporated abroad but with considerable assets and operations in China. This week, two of China's most popular Internet companies officially announced plans for selling shares on the Nasdaq stock market. Another, U.S.-registered Sohu.com, filed documents for a Nasdaq listing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month.