The Internet economy is rising in China and it has a great potential and will become a driving force of economic growth, experts said Monday.

The introduction of the Internet into China in 1993 was like dropping a bomb of "information explosion," said Xu Rongsheng, a Chinese scientist from the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing.

China has since then witnessed rapid growth of the the Internet as well as public networking services, Xu said when attending a conference entitled "China 2.0: The Rise of a Digital Superpower" here.

There have been top world-class Internet companies in China, such as Baidu and Tencent, and these companies are very competitive, he told Xinhua during the conference.

China is a huge country with enormous potential, said Les Cottrell, a scientist with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. He attended the Beijing meeting via video link from the United States.

Chinese companies are innovative and the Internet economy in China has a brilliant prospect, said Dancan Clark, Chairman of BDA China, a consultancy he founded in Beijing in 1994.

The Internet economy can create more jobs, lower the costs for running companies and encourage entrepreneurship, said the co-chair of the conference.

The Internet economy can also change the way of work and life and generate conveniences, he told Xinhua.

(Xinhua News Agency October 19, 2010)