Introduction

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Internet use in China has surged from 620,000 users in October 1997 to 59.1 million users in December 2002 (China Internet Network Information Center, 1997, 2003), giving the country the third largest number of Internet connections in the world, after the USA and Japan (The Economist, 2003). The 59.1 million Internet users represent 4.6% of market penetration in the Chinese economy, which indicates an enormous untapped market potential for e-commerce. Developing e-commerce as a source of economic growth and modernization has been of great interest to the Chinese government, who promulgated it at the national strategic level in the 2001-2005 Five-Year-Plan. In this Five-Year-Plan, e-commerce was envisaged to grow from US$9.32 billion in 2000 (Lawson, 2001) to more than US$20 billion in 2005 (Healy & Duke, 2002). Despite growing optimism, e-commerce is still in its infancy and the task of realising its economic potential remains a real challenge for China. In 2001, the Economic Intelligence Unit (2001) ranked China in 45th position in its survey of the ‘e-readiness' of 60 countries and classified this emerging market economy into the category of ‘e-business laggards'. It was suggested that countries in this category have to overcome significant hurdles in the development of e-commerce.



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E-Commerce Security. Advice from Experts
E-Commerce Security: Advice from Experts (IT Solutions series)
ISBN: 1591402417
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 106

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