The Beijing Book Center Online, allegedly China’s largest Web-based book store, was launched on Tuesday by Compaq and China Information Highway Corp. (CIHC).
Presiding over the online bookstore’s opening was Eckhard Pfeiffer,
Compaq’s president and CEO, during a four-day visit to China, and Lin Wenyi, the vice mayor of Beijing.
Pfeiffer had spoken about his company’s vision for “Internet leadership” in Australia last week, and extended his vision to China.
“E-commerce is fast developing into a major business direction today,” said
Pfeiffer. “I am impressed by the support that the Beijing Government has
given towards the building of its E-Commerce Capital City. The Beijing Book
Center Online is a major milestone on the way to this new era.”
The Beijing Book Center Online marks a major milestone in Beijing as it is
a pilot project aimed at turning Beijing into an E-Commerce Capital City.
More than 200 government officials and guests from various Municipal and National Ministries attended the ceremony.
“The first of its kind in the capital, the Beijing Book Center Online will
act as a catalyst for e-commerce development in China,” stated Pfeiffer. “Compaq is and has always been confident in China’s economic development and we have
identified China as a key player in the global e-commerce world.”
The Beijing Book Center Online took six months to develop and has more
than 160,000 Chinese book titles.
Compaq provided servers, technical and network architecture support to the
project while CIHC was responsible for technology deployment, systems integration and building the infrastructure to support the online bookstore.
Moreover, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and 11 commercial banks played an important part in project by working on the financial infrastructure to envisioned by the E-Commerce Capital City project.
The PBOC is organising the National Bank Card Exchange Center, expected to be ready at the end of this year, and the banks are now jointly building a Secure Authentication Center to support online banking.
For example, the Bank of China (BOC) and the Bank of China Group
in Hong Kong will use the Secure Electronic Transaction protocol to enable
customers to make secure payments using the BOC’s Great Wall bank card and
credit cards from VISA and Mastercard.
Similarly the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB) is also trying to
enable its customers to make payments with their Oriental, VISA, Mastercard
bank cards using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol for Internet-based
credit card transactions.
The Commercial and Industrial Bank of China
(CIBC) is also developing a secure payment method for its Mu Dan Card.
“I congratulate those involved in developing the Beijing Book Center Online
and I’m grateful to the BOC, CIBC, SPDB banks and Compaq Computer
Corp. for their support in helping to build the E-Commerce Capital
City,” said vice mayor Lin.
“The E-Commerce Capital City project aims to serve the development of our
nation’s economy,” added Lin. “It will push the deployment of information technology and information services while contributing to China and the world’s e-commerce
development.”
