E-government implementation: Business contract legal support for Taiwanese businessmen in Mainland China

Taiwan is close to Mainland China both geographically and in culture, although the long-time antipathy between the governments of Taiwan and China after the civil war ended caused isolation for almost four decades. In 1987, cross-strait communication was re-opened, and since then socioeconomical as well as political ties between the countries have been growing closer. However, along with more frequent cross-strait business activities, business contract problems faced by Taiwanese businessmen in China have been growing in number as well as severity. This paper explores problems that Taiwanese businessmen in China have with their business contracts and discusses how Taiwanese government offers on-line business contract legal support to Taiwanese businessmen as e-government implementation. By doing so, this paper proposes a knowledge-based decision support system integrated with the functions of case base, rule base, and relational database developing on a Web-based architecture. Prototype system implementation is presented, some managerial issues on this paper are discussed, and future works are suggested.