The formal operation of the Chinese central government website without spectacular ceremonies on Sunday has done a practical thing in the masses' interest.

A netizen made his comment during the fist day of formal operation of the website. "The Internet makes the world smaller, the website makes the government closer to the people," said the netizen named "small global village".

Receiving countless remarks of such kind, Zhou Xisheng, Editor-in-Chief of the central government website, said it has been highly praised by all social circles since its trial launch.

The website made an online survey among 130,000 visitors, in which 93 percent of them were "very satisfied" or "satisfied" with its overall condition.

"It's quite an amazing popularity in this virtual world where everyone could release his comment to others" said Zhou, who is also the president of Xinhua website, noting that it represents people's strong expectation and support to promote E-governance and the government's style of administration.

The website will serve as a platform for the departments under the State Council, and the provincial, autonomous regional and municipal governments across the country to release information on governmental affairs and provide online services.

The website, in traditional and simplified Chinese versions, has four sections which respectively provide information about government affairs, online services for citizens, enterprises and foreigners, interactive communication between governments and citizens, and other applied functions.

The English version of the website also provide commercial and traveling information services for non-Chinese speakers.

A job-hunting postgraduate said in an e-mail to the website that he got to know the basic rights and duties as a labor on the webpages related to employment guidance. "I've realized that working is also a process of safeguarding my rights," he wrote.

An employee with a small-sized textile mill also said he was innocent of some export policies as he did related business. "I actually found a supreme governmental website as I turned to the Internet," he said, "I solved all my problems because I found what I want on the website."

The chief editor Zhou told Xinhua that thanks to prompt, comprehensive and authoritative information releasing and various forms of interactive communication, the traffic rank for the website had a rocketing jump in the trial three months.

According to Alexa, a professional web information service provider, the traffic rank of "www.gov.cn" hit 3830 over the trial months among more than 12 million websites on the Internet. The website ranked out of top 100,000 at the beginning of trial launch and now it ranks No. 2 among major national government websites, which is just below that of the Canadian government.

"I hope the website become a torchbearer in a renovation of the Chinese governmental administrative style by offering the public a favorable access to the government," said Qingshan, a netizen named Qingshan said.

"In fact, what Qingshan said is the original intention of opening the website," said Zhou.

Many governmental departments overlap their functions, which leads to a lower administrative efficiency than normal, he said. The website is aimed to make the government more transparent, pragmatic and clean.

Netizens expressed their surprise toward some uncommon activities of the website since its trial launch. It has carried unheard-of live broadcasts of the State Council's tele-meetings between the cabinet and provinces to netizens for three times.

"The vice-premier wasn't shy away from the problems and showed responsibility to the public," said a netizen after watching such a lively broadcasted meeting last November in which vice-premier Wu Yi deployed the nation-wide working of anti-bird flu.

Moreover, the communiques, decrees and documents released by the central government since 2000 have been also published on the website.

The website will be more valuable if it provides interactural service in a virtual government environment, said Ma Lin, director of the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

The website is seamlessly linked to thousands of its satellite websites of local governments' and ministries', but among them there is lack of communication and cooperation.

The information inside the pan-government websites must be shared and communicated, unless the interactural service will be restricted, Ma said.

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