Smart cards will soon replace most of the cash and other paper
certificates in the pockets of Chinese people, predicted the China
Information Industry Chamber of Commerce in the Fourth
International Smart Card Fair.
At
the on-going exhibition, which started on Wednesday and run through
Saturday, more than 10 government ministries said they would adopt
smart cards in their daily operations.
Smart cards, the popular name for integrated circuit cards (IC
cards), have been flourishing in recent years. They have become the
most important thing in people’s wallets in the form of credit
cards, telephone cards, power cards, ID cards, insurance cards and
even door keys.
Last year, more than 230 million smart cards were issued in China,
most of them in the form of telephone cards, according to Chen
Chong, deputy director of the Department of Electronics and IT
Products under the Ministry of Information Industry.
Of
these cards, 120 million were public telephone IC cards and another
42 million were mobile phone SIM cards.
More than 10 government ministries and financial organizations,
involving trade, transportation, power, medicine, insurance,
tourism, census registration, taxation, banking and utilities fee
collection, have started to adopt IC cards in their operation.
The market demand exceeded 300 million by the end of last year and
will jump again this year, according to Chen.
Although domestic products control 70 percent of the domestic
market, international IC vendors are still upbeat about the
potential of this promising land.
Most of the leading IC makers, including Gemplus, ST
Microelectronics, Philips and Motorola, have set up production
bases on the Chinese mainland and hope to get a piece of the
high-end IC market.
The Chinese government started a project called “Golden Card” in
1993, in which the government encourages people to use cards
instead of cash and paper certificates.
(China Daily 06/08/2001))