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Mark O'Neill

More than 300,000 people, including customers from Taiwan and the US, have visited Beijing's first Internet bookstore since it opened on Tuesday.

 Compaq president and chief executive Eckhard Pfeiffer yesterday said visitors had so far placed orders worth 20,000 yuan (about HK$18,616).

 Beijing Book Centre Online opened on Tuesday, with a data bank containing more than 160,000 Chinese books, making it the largest on-line bookstore for Chinese books in Asia http://www.bjbb.com.cn).

 The technology was jointly developed by Compaq China and China Information Highway Corp.

 Mr Pfeiffer said the store represents the first time that people can put books on line in Beijing, with 1,000 customers having signed up for the store's book club.

 The capital has other Internet bookshops but customers have to pay separately through banks, taking up to six days, against payment within 24 hours via the Internet.

 The opening was widely covered by television stations and print media, with vice-mayor Lin Wenyi buying the first book.

 E-commerce is in its infancy in the mainland, mainly because secure payment systems have not yet been developed. So, while people can order goods over the Internet, they cannot pay for them at the same time.

 Mainland banks are building an Internet banking centre to support on-line banking services, expected to be ready at the end of this year.

 Mr Pfeiffer was speaking at the 'Government Leaders Forum on E-Commerce' seminar at a Beijing hotel at which he made a strong pitch for his company to be the top supplier to the mainland's burgeoning Internet industry. He said Internet users in the mainland will grow from 1.8 million last year to more than 3.5 million in 2001 and 10 million in 2002.

 'China wants to put 80 per cent of its central and local government institutions on-line by the year 2000,' he said. 'This is an ambitious goal that will help move China to the forefront on e-commerce.'  He said that Compaq had sold 10,000 personal computers and 400 servers to the China Commodity Exchange Centre, which is building an e-commerce system that aims to have 80,000 customers, including state trading firms, wholesalers, retailers and other companies.

 It is also working with the Guangdong Provincial Telecommunications Authority to set up an e-commerce technology centre and design and implement e-commerce applications for the telecom industry.



Crowds flock to Beijing's first e-commerce book shop