China's first E-commerce portal, www.ChinaEC.com, has gone fully operational, and says it aims at becoming China's largest E-commerce portal between online consumers and product providers.  
 
President of ChinaEC, Su Qiqiang, head of several successful IT companies, says the operational mode of the website covers both a search engine and providing B to C services.

"As an online shopping portal, ChinaEC is dedicated to providing E-commerce services for e-shop websites and online shoppers. For B to C websites, ChinaEC will offer services to promote its websites and products, so that they can focus on their main operations while leaving other things to ChinaEC."

More than 30 businesses and websites have formed partnership with ChinaEC, enabling their products to be found through the portal. ChinaEC will then guarantee the authenticity of the products they undertake to promote.

These businesses range from home appliances, home decoration, software and book sales to telecommunications, gifts and flowers, amongst others.

China's leading home appliances giant Gome is one. Its deputy general manager Liu Chunxi says it will help to improve growth in their online business:

"Gome Home Appliances started online shopping at the beginning of last year. Currently, online business lags far behind Gome's overall business growth. We also want to enlarge our consumer groups through this platform."

Meanwhile, an official from the China Electronic Commerce Association says E-commerce in China is about to enter a brand new stage.

"China's first law on electronic signatures will come out soon, and will be the first law specifically dealing with E-commerce. It recognizes the operational mode of E-commerce in a legal form. China's first series of E-commerce policies will also be enacted in the latter half of this year. Both are bound to bring about a new era for E-commerce development in China."

China currently has more than 12,000 B2C websites and sales through the internet grow at more than 50 percent annually. Insiders say E-commerce portals like ChinaEC are expected to further promote the E-commerce sector in China. And they will lead to a re-arrangement of the market for those more competitive enterprises who have access to E-commerce competition.

(CRI July 21, 2004)