Experts predicted great potential for the development of China's electronic commerce (e-commerce) websites at the 2003 general assembly of the China Electronic Commerce Association (CECA).

Dai Haiping, secretary general of CECA's tax branch, said it was easy for e-commerce websites targeting particular audiences to develop their own groups of loyal buyers as long as their services were properly oriented.

Dai said this had been proved by the success of some e-commerce websites like on-line bookstore dangdang.com and Chinese domain name service provider 3721.

Websites for the trading of antiques, jade and stamps had their own groups of customers, which were stable and growing.

The operation mode of these websites was worth studying, Dai said.

China's e-commerce had entered a development stage which would see a boom of e-commerce websites. Before 2001, e-commerce websites were mainly those established by IT businesses and e-commerce service providers.

(Xinhua News Agency October 17, 2003)