China to Boost Software Industry BEIJING, Oct 15, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) China will invest more money in its software industry in a bid to prepare the budding sector for foreign competition, state media said Sunday. Yang Tianxing, director-general of the China Software Industry Association, said China would try to cultivate several powerful software bases in the country, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The government would nurture a group of big software companies -- each with an annual output value of more than 1 billion yuan (USD 120 million) -- within the next five to 10 years, Yang said at a computer and electronics trade exhibition in the southern city of Shenzhen. By then, the export volume of software was expected to reach 1 billion dollars, up from the current USD 130 million. The industry has witnessed skyrocketing growth since the 1990s and has become the most rapidly developing sector in the country with an annual growth rate of over 30 percent, Yang said. Last year, the sector sold 17.6 billion yuan (USD 2.1 billion) worh of products both domestically and abroad. The government is pouring millions of yuan into building high-tech parks and sponsoring local venture capital firms. In the next five years, China would set up more preferential policies for software companies and would crackdown on piracy, which is a serious problem plaguing the industry, Yang said. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse) --- Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest news --- |
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