The mainland government has teamed up with United States-based portal MeetChina.com to introduce an e-commerce platform for 100,000 mainland companies to do international trade on the Internet by the end of the year.
The Electronics Information Centre, part of Internet regulator the Ministry of Information Industry, will partner MeetChina.com and other government departments to build the electronic trading platform.
The partnership comes before the mainland government has made comprehensive regulations for foreign investment in the Internet sector.
Authorities have not yet defined what Internet content providers or Internet service providers are.
MeetChina.com - controlled by Softbank Ventures, Citicorp Capital and Motorola Ventures - is the only wholly foreign-owned enterprise licensed for e-commerce in the mainland.
The firm has also built alliances with key trade and industry bodies to capitalise on the expected boom in cross-border business-to-business e-commerce after World Trade Organisation entry.
