World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced it will broaden its footsteps in mainland China with the group’s first-ever event to be organized in November.
The China International Forum on WWW’s Development 2003 will be held on 12-13 November 2003 in Beijing. The event is co-organized by the China Computer Federation and the W3C Office in Hong Kong.
China has more than 45 million Internet users and the number is still growing. Chinese is the second most widely used language (behind English) on the Web. Cultural and language differences increase the necessity to pay attention to how the Web grows so that more people can access the Web easily, and so that user agents can render and search Chinese Web pages correctly with a variety of devices.
“The differences in knowledge levels, languages, consumers and producers, etc., have created information asymmetry which hinders international information exchange,” said Professor Shi Zhongzhi.
Many international companies have set up research and development laboratories in China to work on Web-related technologies. However, the Web community at large needs more input from Chinese public users, academia and local industry, who depend on the Web in their daily activities.
“In view of the growing Web usage, especially growth in China, the Chinese people must participate more actively in the development of Web technologies,” says Prof. Vincent Shen, Manager of the W3C Hong Kong Office.
Details of the event can be found here.
