Internet has created a new world beyond the real world—a “virtual network world” or “The sixth continent” called by Lu Yongxiang, the academician of Chinese Academy of Science. E-commerce brought about by Internet is one of the most significant scientific accomplishments. In business, the prosperous e-commerce technology gives rise to a revolution in the circulation system. It breaks the boundary of time and space, alters the trade pattern, improves the circulation of merchandize, capital and information, and makes enterprises have an edge over others as well by reducing the cost of production effectively. In short, e-commerce has enabled the traditional business to achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results. The influence of the e-commerce will go beyond the business activity. It will make a profound impact on each aspect of human society, such as production and employment, government function, working talent, law systems and education etc. It permeates into every profile: industries, logistics, finance, media, governments, enterprises, research organizations and even traditional agricultures. With the development of the e-commerce, it will influence and impact to a larger extent every aspect of our society with each passing day. A new economic revolution on the basis of digitalization and Internet has set in. We can say without exaggeration that the electronic commerce is the most significant industrial revolution since Industrial Revolution, with deeper influence on mankind than the former two industrial revolutions, because it not only can raise greatly productivity, efficiency of economic operations, lower the economy operation cost, and make many originally impossible things possible, but also influence people’s life styles and every social aspect and therefore change their world outlook and methodology. In the new century, participation of the third revolution exerts the influence, to a large degree, on economy in China, especially in shortening the gap between the western developed countries and catching up with and surpassing them. Therefore, it is inevitable for us to develop e-commerce, to join the world market, participate in the globalization competition and rejuvenate China. So the book will cover the following aspects of e-commerce: its coming into being development, its composition, its nature, the guidelines for e-commerce system design, difficulties and respective solutions in e-commerce, methods of designing a good website, the relation between e-commerce and international trade, the legal problems brought by e-commerce, the methods of dealing with and analyzing how to deal with and analyze e-commerce cases. In conclusion, all the above will be touched upon in this book, relevant philosophy problems about social overall influence on mankind are beyond the scope of this book.
