Respected Executive Chairman and Distinguished Guests:
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Good morning! First of all, on behalf of the State Council Informatization Office of the PRC, I would like to express our warm welcome to all participants in this Forum and to give sincere thanks to the organizations, which have done a lot of hard work for holding successfully this Forum! I avail myself of this opportunity to give and participants a brief introduction to the situation of the construction of e-Government and the development of national economic and social informatization in China, in order to exchange and share the experiences and lessons obtained from all countries.

Since the reform and opening to the outside and with the unceasing progress in the construction of modernization, the Chinese government pays much attention to the use of modern information technology in government departments as well as to the construction of e-Government. From the beginning of the 1990s on, we have built a large number of business systems one after another; achieved remarkable successes in the engineering of "Golden Custom" and "Golden Taxation", and had some good results in office automatization and informatization of government administration. Last August, the Chinese central government re-established the leading groups for national informatization, in charge of coordinating comprehensively the informatization work in political, economic, cultural, military and other areas. This ia an important decision tallying with the development of domestic and international situation to promote national economic and social informatization in China. Besides, the State Council Information Office was established for ensuring the implementation of the development strategy of national economic and social informatization. As a working body under the leading group for national informatization, it did the day-to-day work. Last December, the leading group for national informatization held the first meeting and made a decision, that is to take the construction of e-Government as the keystone of Chinese informatization in the future period; and governments at all levels must go ahead of the rest for promoting national economic and social information.

In the environment of ICT revolution and the development of economic globalization, the construction of e-Government in China is a strategic keystone of national economy and social informatization. As a big developing country, it is of great significance to promote the construction of e-Government. First, the construction of e-Government is an objective need for accelerating the transformation of government functions; is helpful to improve and perfect the socialist economic system, to make better government's working efficiency and the policy-making level and to raise the level of a hardworking and honest government and to strengthen the macro control; which ensuring the transformation of government functions going on wheels. Secondly, being a formal member of WTO, China will be confronted with an increasingly complicated and quickly changing circumstance of public administration and the people's expectation of government's service is increasing day by day. So, Chinese government must use advanced information technology sufficiently and transform traditional administrative measures in order to adapt objective circumstance's demand and to lift government supervision and service's level. For this reason, the construction of e-Government in China is not simply to make government eletronized and to set up a system of nets, but must realize with each passing day the important thought of three represents: Representation of Advanced Productive Force, Advanced Culture and the Benefit of the Most Masses of Jiang Zemin, the secretary general of the CPC, conform constantly to the reform and opening policy's demand to government administration; taking the demand as orientation, make the government work more scientific, harmonious and democratic; while enhancing the capacity of administration by law and quicken to build a transparent, effective, hardworking and honest government.

During the period of the 10th Five-Year Plan, the main targets of the construction of e-Government in China are as follows: to form a government administration information and network platform, secure, reliable and with a unified standard and full functions; to realize step by step information exchange and sharing among government departments at the same level as well as at higher or lower levels; to support the development and use of the systems of governmental public functions and general affairs; to obtain distinct achievements in the construction of key business systems; to get great progress in the construction of the data bank of basic and strategic government administration information, while enhancing clearly the degree of information resource sharing; to strengthen administrative capability, policy-making power, emergence-dealing ability and public service capability of central and local departments of government administration at all levels; to put regulations and standards related to e-Government into effect; to form an initial frame of e-Government system and a system of security and training; so that to lay a solid foundation for the construction of e-Government in next Five Year Plan.

According to the above-mentioned targets, the actual principal tasks in the construction of e-Government in China are: to build and integrate e-Government network platform in a planned way and step by step, in order to create necessary conditions for realizing interconnection, interchange and resource sharing among the main business systems and for normalizing government's administration and service; to continue perfecting and setting up a number of key systems of government administration and business; to plan and develop a number of strategic, macro, basic and public-good-based government administration information resource; to promote actively public service; to build fundamentally a security system of e-Government; to set up fundamentally a security system and a standard system for e-Government; to improve the training and examination system of civil servants in an informational way; to establish and perfect laws, regulations and institution related to e-Government.

The government at all levels go ahead of the rest in promoting the development of the whole social informatization, which will produce a long-term and far-reaching influence upon national economic and social informatization in China. In the light of the present situation of the development of Chinese information industry, the national economic and social informatization in China is keeping a sustainable, fine and healthy development posture. According to an estimation, by 2005, the growth value of telecommunication business and electronic information products will occupy more than 7% of China's GDP and the international competitiveness of information industry will be raised in an all round way; the scale and capacity of network will be the first in the world; popularization rate of telephone will be over 40%; the population covered both by broadcasting and television will be 95% of the total population in China; the users of cable-television will be over 150 million and the penetration rate of Internet users will reach over 8%. The transformation of the traditional industries has made active progress, while great attention is paid to bridging the digital divide, which has achieved fruited results.

If all of these targets are realized, the information degree in China will be further raised which will give great influence upon the process of Chinese industrialization. We sincerely hope that in the course of realizing the above-mentioned targets, we shall strengthen international cooperation and accelerate the process of national economic and social informatization in China with the international society.

Thank you very much!