Since the 1980's, almost all developed country in the world has set up state-level education and research computer networks, which have been interconnected one after another to constitute the cross-border academic network--Internet. The advent of Internet has accelerated information transmission, created a brand new networked computing environment for teachers, students and R&D personnel worldwide, virtually changed and driven inter-personal communication, resource sharing, scientific computation and collaborative research and development, and become the most important infrastructure for education and research in these countries, which has significantly boosted development of education and research in western countries.

In recent years, in order to maintain their position as economic powers and technical leaders, many developed countries have launched their "Information Highway" initiatives, and are implementing them vigorously. Just in such a scenario, the Chinese government decided to build CERNET, which defined its significance as follows: Beneficial to development of China's educational and research undertakings.

CERNET will allow teachers, researchers and students in most universities and colleges around China to study and do research in a networked environment linking every part of China and every corner of the world, which significantly improves education quality and research abilities in the country, provides with Chinese universities and colleges an easy access to the world's science and technology arena and creates an important platform for fostering of culture-indifferent, future-oriented high-caliber talents.

China is now developing marketing economy vigorously. The climax of its information initiative is coming---multiple state-level computerized information and network projects are under planning or preparation, which will accelerate and drive progress of China's information initiative, offer China a passport to worldwide information communication and technical competition, make information industry a dominant element of China's competitive power in next century.

CERNET will lay a substantive technical foundation for China's information highway program, allowing network experiments, boosting development experiment, and bringing up Internet competence, and consequently shortening the gap between China and developed countries and making China one of the powerhouses in the boundaryless information battle in the next century.

update:2006-1-11