Zhou Shaohua, 30, a local office worker, yesterday morning spent less than half an hour surfing the Internet at home and successfully applied for a birth permit and completed all the procedures needed to deliver a child.

"I can now concentrate on having a baby," said Zhou.

Zhou found out last week that she was three months pregnant.

Zhou's sister-in-law had to visit local neighborhood committee more than 10 times in the space of a month before she was granted a birth permit two years ago.

"The procedures for a birth permit were very complicated, and the neighborhood committees had not introduced online services," Zhou said.

Zhou is now just one of a growing number of people who are now using the Internet to obtain this permit in the capital of south China's Guangdong Province.

According to an official from the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Civil Affairs, more than 70 percent of the city's neighborhood committees have been equipped with computer systems that allow local residents to apply for different kinds of certificates, including birth permits, at home.

Neighborhood committees are responsible for granting birth permits and other family planning certificates on the Chinese mainland.

According to the scheme to build a "digital Guangzhou," all neighborhood committees will be equipped with computer systems before the end of 2006, the unnamed official said yesterday.

To this end, the Guangzhou municipal government has decided to invest more than 1.6 billion yuan (US$193 million) to develop the city's information industry in the following two years.

By the end of 2006, every staff member in township governments and neighborhood committees will have a computer in their office.

And more than 85 percent of families in Guangzhou will have computers.

All the city's government departments, bureaux and organizations will open online services to the residents.

In another development, Guangdong Province had registered more than 9.7 million Internet users by the end of June, the biggest number in the country.

Guangdong's Internet users represent more than 12 percent of the country's total, accounting for 12.1 percent of the province's total population.

An official from the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Information Industry yesterday predicted the number of Internet users in Guangdong will be more than 10 million by the end of the year.

"The Internet has become the fastest growing industry and the one with the greatest growth potential in Guangdong," the official said.

About 60 percent of the province's Internet users are business people, the official added.

And most of them are university graduates under 35 years old.

About 30 percent of Guangdong's Internet users are surfing for entertainment, while the rest are using it for studies and other purposes.

Guangdong has registered more than 4.38 million computers which have been connected with Internet, accounting for 14.1 percent of the country's total.

A family is estimated to spend about 150 yuan (US$18.1) on Internet services every month.

The official attributed the province's rapid growth in the Internet users to the provincial government's great efforts to promote information industry and try to construct e-government.

(China Daily August 25, 2004)