Liu Chuanzhi, board chairman of Legend Group, the largest computer company of China, said on June 11 that Chinese portal webs should prepare for a long-distance running, and the merges and acquisitions (M&A) are actually a process of gradual maturation.

He made the remarks at the signing ceremony for the establishment of a joint venture between Legend and America Online (AOL).

He said that the vigorously developing Chinese portal webs were stricken last year. To a great extent, this was actually caused by capital being prepaid too early for the Internet's future profits. Of course, another reason was that some companies regarded long-distance race as a dash, and listing as the terminal.

He also noted that the arrival of e-business and e-administration is irresistible and currently it is only a matter of time. Of course time is subject to the restriction of environment. If we just sit back and wait for the maturity of environment, then it might probably take 10 years' time, but if we come together to create the environment, this process might be shortened to two years.

He reminded people of the fact that China boasts lots of potential advantages which, at the moment, remain only in the theoretical stage. This fact requires that Chinese internet must break through the bottlenecks which restrain its development, bottlenecks in the banking and communications fields, but more importantly, in the technological realm, including information security, data trusteeship, settlement and unified authentication. Only when breakthroughs are made in these aspects is it possible to boost the development of China's internet.

He pointed out bluntly that Chinese internet companies, while choosing partners, shouldn't concentrate on their own interest only, instead, they should try to seek a good teacher to cooperate with, for example, the collaboration between Legend and AOL.

With regard to the question whether or not Legend's cooperation with AOL means "inviting the wolf into the house", Liu pointed out that before 1990, China's computer industry was completely closed, and its development was very slow; only after China opened its door to the outside world, did it develop cooperation and was it possible to jointly expand the market and boost the popularization of internet in China.

(People’s Daily 06/13/2001)