Participating in the conference for the first time, China sent its Minister of Information Industry, Jichuan Wu to deliver the conference keynote address. In his keynote address in which he warned almost 1,500 delegates from 55 countries "Bridging the 'divide' is a challenge of global dimensions facing the human race."

A day later, Pekka Tarjanne, former Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said, "Mankind is not going to survive unless the UN, the G-8, the Group of 77, the World Economic Forum, the World Bank and the rest of the decision makers are really concerned and concentrating on the bridging of the digital divide."

Tarjanne publicly criticized China for the ruling Communist Party's attempts to stifle electronic dissidence, and several ranking delegates said China had to be more open and transparent in awarding contracts to outside businesses, especially in telecommunications projects.

China was also big in the Honolulu meeting simply because it is a huge potential market.

"All the money is going to China, that's the place to be," said Jonathan Liu, the head of a venture capital company specializing in potential Chinese investments. "A big stimulus is the 2008 Olympics," he said, "China will spend $80 billion dollars on that alone."

"They are going to build 36 new stadiums, and they are doing a lot of infrastructure improvements, and they have a lot of environmental commitments they have to meet," he said, "and that's a lot of potential investment."

He said he made dozens scores of contacts in the meeting which draws the heads of telecommunication companies and subcontractors from all over Asia. John Spence, head of John A Spence and Associates, a consultancy in Australia, and a member of the PTC executive board, said the 24th annual meeting went "very well indeed."

"After September 11th we thought we would have a significant drop off in attendance, but we didn't," he said. "It is always a great place for exchanging ideas, but the most significant factor was the participation of China for the first time. We got around a previous problem by calling Taiwan 'Chinese Taipei' and now they are participating. That was a very big objective, and China is a very important market."

Hoyt Zia PTC executive director told the Conference News Daily "We at PTC hope China's presence at our events will open doors for more businesses around the Pacific and Hawaii." And if early indications are true, it might.

Jim Bannan, Associate Director for Distance Learning at the Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) in Honolulu, said Chinese delegates approached him with a query: how could PREL help millions of Chinese children learn English? Bannan said he rolled up his sleeves and mapped out a plan.

Bill Keever, chief executive of Vodafone in Asia, said his company had stayed away from China for a long time because of "investment security concerns" And now, he said, "The Chinese government must reduce uncertainty through more open economic policies."

Wu, in his enthusiastically received remarks, said, "(The) information and communications industry is of strategic significance to the economic lifeline of a countryS But as the industry develops, the 'digital divide' widens and is evident in the fact that a quarter of the world population has never made a telephone call.

"Even within developing countries, the divide is huge as well. Eighty percent of telephone lines are installed in urban areas, but 60 percent of the population is in (the) countryside.

"The question of the 'digital divide' must be brought to the urgent attention of (the) international community that is duty-bound to take actions and find a practical solution to that question." To bridge the "digital divide," Minister Wu said:

Wu, a cabinet-level official, leads China's Ministry of Information Industry which is a super agency charged with modernizing communications infrastructure and facilitating new business partnerships around the world. He is considered the chief architect and gatekeeper of China's future information industry, overseeing telecommunications, multimedia, broadcasting, satellites and the Internet.

In other conference action:

Besides plenary sessions, delegates attended some eight concurrent meetings a day throughout the sprawling Hilton Hawaiian village, mostly on technological subjects.

"It was a terrific meeting because the content was excellent," said Zia, the PTC executive director, ' and communication is what makes it work -- communications in the halls communications outside the halls. It all furthers knowledge, and that's what makes it work. That's what makes IT (information technology) work." According to its mission statement, PTC (www.PTC.org) "is an international, non profit non-governmental organization which includes 700 members representing business, government, and academia in the Asia-Pacific region to promote the development of information and telecommunications industries in the Pacific with an emphasis on developing countries."