2013-Chapter 3 E-commerce Standards Abstract

With widespread access to the Internet a reality, the demand for e-commerce technological standards is growing. In order for international trade to take advantage of cross-border e-commerce and to achieve the ideal of barrier-free trading, the United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) has established a set of global e-commerce standards, which will facilitate trade and support trading in e-commerce, as well as help to develop e-commerce policies and regulations to meet the internationalization requirements of e-commerce: Providing the basic infrastructure for e-commerce standards, enabling enterprises around the world, regardless of their size and location, to adopt a consistent set of standards for conducting secure and reliable e-commerce transactions.

From 2012 to 2013, no significant changes have been made to the global e-commerce standards. In mainland China, currently more than 600 information technology standards for e-commerce have been established and are being promoted. In particular, policies that govern e-commerce services and software development are: 11th 5-Year Plan (from 2007 to 2010) and the 12th 5-Year Plan (from 2011 to 2015). However, no matter how rapidly e-commerce development in China is advancing, Beijing has not sent delegations to any of the UN/CEFACT Forum sessions. On the other hand, Taiwan has participated in the translation of Core Components Library (CCL) early on, which is expected to help Taiwan gain future opportunities.

In Japan, the E-commerce Standards are mostly geared toward applications in major enterprises. In recent years, however, as Japan intends to trade with mainland Chinese industries and to promote its e-commerce industry, the country is actively participating in the translation of CCL into Japanese. The creation of the Japanese version of the CCL standards is a natural way to integrate with the Chinese version of CCL, and it also helps to bring the country in line with international standards.

The e-commerce development in South Korea benefits from the country's legislation specific to e-commerce. South Korea's e-commerce environment is governed by a sound and comprehensive system of laws, which follow a special nationalistic legislative approach in the formulation and regularization of the national policy based on basic law. This is referred to as the Framework Act on Electronic Commerce. Under this framework, each law and its constituent e-commerce standards have propelled South Korea to be an e-commerce pioneer. In comparison, Taiwan has to work hard to catch up with South Korea.