President, China Postal Academy of the Ministry of Post and
Telecommunications AGE 55 E-MAILyjliu@cpa.com.cn BIO This many
Westerners haven't salivated at the possibility of trade with
China since Victoria was Queen of England. In the mid 19th
century, the Opium Wars forcefully fully opened trade with
China's port cities; Liu is helping make sure that this time the
trade is on China's terms. In 1993, as the founder of Chinanet,
he became the father of the Internet in China. Leery of all that
pesky open information that has made the Internet so popular in
the West, Chinanet has some pretty stout firewalls to ensure that
only government-approved information gets through. 1998 POWER PLAY Liu has called Chinanet, which has more than 1 million
users, "a powerful tool in helping China make the transition from
a socialist to a market economy." That's a bold statement coming
from a government official. With companies like Dell and
Microsoft entering the Chinese market, Liu is now trying to
create a nationwide "postal computer network" which will employ
wired kiosks to handle electronic data such as money remittances.
He sees the possibility of gradually transforming those kiosks
into a commercial network whose bandwidth is used for electronic
commerce. PLACE YOUR BETS With a population of more than 1
billion, it's no wonder the West wants a piece of the market. You
may want to look into a fund like Guinness Flight China that
concentrates on Chinese development.
