New legislation allows for business transactions to be sealed online
Electronic signatures will carry the same legal weight as seals and handwritten signatures in business transactions on the mainland from April.
E-commerce has been growing rapidly - with domestic revenue amounting to US$60 billion last year - and there have been growing calls for legislation to protect those involved in online transactions.
An electronic signature is a unique sequence of characters, a scanned-in signature, a fingerprint scan or other form of personal code with which internet users can prove their identity.
President Hu Jintao signed the Law on Electronic Signature on Saturday at the end of a Standing Committee meeting of the National People's Congress.
Under the legislation, people convicted of forging electronic signatures, falsely using another person's signature or stealing passwords containing e-signatures will be punished under criminal law, while infringements resulting in financial loss will be subject to civil law.