Dai Xianglong, governor of the People's Bank of China, said at a two-day International Symposium on the Network Economy and Economic Governance, that the bank also attaches great importance to the training of specialists.

"Now we have a large group of highly qualified professionals engaged in the study of e-banking," he said.

"Given China's imminent entry into the World Trade Organization, the first impact on the banking industry will be competition from e-banking," Dai said, adding that it is an "inevitable" task for China to speed up e-banking development and increase the competitiveness of the financial sector.

He said that more than 200 branches and subsidiaries of some 20 banks have their own web sites and homepages, with more than 50 of them providing substantive on-line services to over 400,000 customers.

In June last year, the China Financial Certification Center, sponsored by the central bank and composed of 12 commercial banks, was established. Under the coordination of the central bank, China is speeding up national credit card integration, and the integration is expected to be completed among large and medium-sized cities by 2003.

Dai expressed the belief that e-banking is not simply transplanting banking onto the net. It is a result of financial and technological innovation and represents a new organizational form of the banking sector.

The risks of e-banking are associated with those of network technology and original operational risks of banking business. Overall, they mainly include investment strategy risks, legal risks and operational risks, he concluded.

"It is therefore imperative for the financial regulatory authorities to give appropriate guidance to the development of e- banking in order to facilitate the innovation of e-banking and ensure effective supervision," he added.

(People's Daily 04/20/2001)