"We've had progress in coastal cities," said Daniel Carp, chief executive officer of Kodak. But that is still far from its goal of helping every household in China enjoy photography.

"We're also moving to take photography west," he said during a trip to China earlier this month.

Carp did not elaborate on how Kodak will penetrate China's hinterland, but one of his colleagues said more promotional efforts will be made in western regions in the near future.

Carp said promotion is a crucial part of his three-prong blueprint for the country, which also includes having the best people working for Kodak and having the best technology available in the local market.

The company spent US$1.26 billion in 1998 as part of a major restructuring of its imaging industry in China. At the time, Carp said his company faced the task of manufacturing world-class products for the Chinese market, which were also able to be exported.

Kodak now has 28 representative offices and five factories in China. In Shanghai, it manufactures some of its most technologically advanced products, such as the Kodak EasyShare LS 443 digital camera that was recently released at the Photokina Show in Germany.

Almost half of the products, at its branch in Wuxi, in East China's Jiangsu Province, of mostly photographic processing chemicals, will be shipped to Japan, South Korea and China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province by the end of the year.

He said the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation's recent anti-trust regulations would not impact Kodak in China, which has no intent to stifle competition in the industry.

Kodak has already grabbed the lion's share of China's photographic film market. It claimed 63.1 percent of the market in 2000 in major Chinese cities.

(China Daily November 12, 2002)