The development of Chinese intermediary organizations have indicated that the more developed the market economy, the more closely related market entities, the more active the trading activities and the more requiring for more mature intermediary organizations. With the improvement of China' s market economy mechanism, we are sure that intermediary organizations will play more important roles. They will thus see a bright future. The development trend of intermediary organizations are summarized as:

1. Popularization

In China today, popularization of intermediary organizations also refers to "non-governmentalization" because intermediary organizations feature their "intermediary roles". For government, they are not subsidiaries; in stead, they are independent and represent the interests of all economic entities. While for enterprises, they are servers and protectors of social interests. At present, the Chinese government is removing the obstacles in policies and systems against the development of intermediary organizations by taking whether they are in favor of the market economy as the criteria for developing intermediary organizations. It is predictable that popularization will be the key characteristic in the development of intermediary organizations.

2. Marketization

Now that Chinese intermediary organizations are the outcome of market economy, as long as China never changes its development direction towards market economy, the marketization trend of Chinese intermediary organizations will not be changed. From a higher level, these intermediary organizations are principally operated under the rules of market economy, but far from perfect. As for those intermediary organizations under strong influence of the government, if they fail to transform their operational mechanism in accordance with the market-oriented requirements and keep pace with the market economy, they will be washed out of the tide of market economy.

3. Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is the superior mission confronted with Chinese intermediary organizations from now on. Particularly, after several "Intermediary Scandals" at home and abroad, it becomes more imminent than ever. Self-discipline comes from two aspects. One is that intermediary organizations should be strict with themselves, such as making public the affairs and accounting performance and thoroughly accepting the supervision and inquiry of the mass; it is important to strengthen the legislation on timely rectification of ultra vires acts and illegal acts and the punishments to the person liable. Secondly, tighten up the industrial self-discipline for intermediary organizations, such as market access, qualification recognition, qualification verification of the members within the industry, supervision and evaluation on intermediary behaviors, punishment to organizations in violation of related laws and rules.

4. Standardization

From the view of market economy, Chinese intermediary organizations are late in development compared to Western developed countries. Under these circumstances, many approaches and techniques are still in exploration and not well standardized. To some extent, insufficient standardization is the biggest obstacle against the exertion of the functions of Chinese intermediary organizations. In this view, to put more efforts in standardization is not only the focus for the development of intermediary organizations in China in the future, but the fundamental prerequisites for bettering their serving to the market economy. The standardization ought to start from three aspects. One, standardize the system construction. It is said that the Chinese government is formulating laws, rules and regulations for further regulating intermediary organizations. Second, greatly improve the quality and professional awareness of the practitioners. To be frank, China still lags far behind developed countries in this aspect. Third, quicken the pace to bring into line with the international practices. When vigorously inviting foreign intermediary organizations to launch their businesses in China, China shall take the initiative to create conditions for the domestic organizations to step out of the country and participate in international competition from a wider and higher level, so as to make more contributions to the development of China's market economy.

(China.org.cn November 7, 2003)