| AbstractElectronic commerce (EC) is a kind of business activity hooked with Internet. The main characteristics of EC are global, dynamic-oriented, gradational, and real timely.The rapid development of EC is not accidental, as it is deeply rooted in society and economy development. Based on the widely used Internet prompted by the globalization of information, EC is an immediate result of the development of information technology. Along with the intensified integration of the world economy and globalization of enterprises, the capital flow is quicker and quicker and market changes are more and more volatile. A country's economy is more closely related to and dependent upon each other. The traditional way of international trade cannot accommodate the ever-rising demands of the global economic development. This is the primary reason that EC has developed so quickly.As a brand-new business activity, EC will be the most important engine to push the economic development forward in the 21st century. President Jiang Zemin once indicates that EC represents a new trend of trade development in the future. EC will throw the world into a new era in which traditional industry will be merged with information technology industry, and economic benefits can be realized only when traditional industry is transformed through information technology.It is estimated that the worldwide Internet users will be reaching 350 million by the end of this year and trade value of using EC will total US$ 250 billion. Under the strong impact of the rapid development of EC the world over, China's EC has just started. From the China Commodity Market under the administration of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC for short), the Capital EC Project of Beijing Government to the 'Gold Trade Project' jointly launched by the State Commission of Economic and Trade and the Ministry of information Industry, a large number of projects related to EC came into being. Although it is only a few years since China entered into EC, it can be predicted that the development speed of China's EC will be no slower than that in developed countries.EC is a new mode of trade with the Internet as a carrier. For this new mode, Electronic technology is only a tool and the substance of EC is business activity itself. So much so that it still keeps the characteristics of traditional businesses. However, the quick development of the information technology gives a strong impact on traditional trade modes. This will lead to the substantial change of old trade mode. Foreign trade companies should pay much more attention to such impact, specially to the effects on the fashion, mechanism, marketing, management, and policy of international trade. By comparing the commonalties and differences between EC and traditional international trade, foreign trade companies should work out their own strategies to maintain continuous development in the EC era.The process of international trade can be reduced to information flows, capital flows and commodity flows either in EC mode or traditional way. Yet they are different on operational processes, especially the flow time and the speed. For the traditional way, the three kinds of flows are separate and time is longer. But for EC, they can happen in the same electronic platform and time is shorter, even though both buyers and sellers happened to be in different countries and areas. For example, to conduct a business transaction on computer software, all three flows can be done in the same electronic platform handled by both the buyer and the seller. This is typical of full EC. Compared with full EC mode, there is another incomplete EC mode, in which, three flows are not in the same electronic platform, but they are controlled under the same system. In such circumstance, the information flow and capital flow can be done in the same electronic platform, and the commodity flow is controlled by the same system.The foreign trade companies are among the earliest users to have acce... |
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