people ’ s republic of china is our reliable partner on this path. it is our task to fortify each segment of our society and create conditions for dignified and rich life and work. i believe that this way we endorse people ’ s expectations of a better life, which are justified. allow me to conclude. technologies should serve people, therefore – people and technologies, not people or technologies. i wish us all health, knowledge and love for our countries. may we have a successful 17th china international finance forum. 3 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches

talk about a few others. first and foremost, technological advances. even from just a few years ’ perspective it is clear that financial services have been transformed by technological innovation. arguably we are moving to a world in which more and more trading and settlement processes will use automated, electronic systems. and the pace of change is probably increasing. the lse moved away from a trading floor in 1986. it has since moved to electronic and largely dematerialised share settlement in crest in 1996, and to the electronic order book sets for its largest 100 or so stocks in 1997. last year liffe decided to switch from floor trading to its new electronic connect system. more broadly, electronic trading systems have been, or are being, introduced in a whole range of government bond, repo, eurobond and foreign exchange markets. initiatives are well advanced to introduce electronic ‘ straight - through - processing ’ in various markets, allowing the transaction process to be automated from the initial trade right through to settlement. on top of all this there is the as yet unknown potential of the internet. in the us, there has been an explosion of retail investment activity through the internet ; in europe we are still way behind. much of the internet business that is already taking place – here or in the us – is essentially substituting for speaking to a broker, and the brokers that have adjusted most quickly to this change in the us have benefited accordingly. but use of the internet has already led to a change in retail investor behaviour in the us. and if the internet is eventually to have a really profound impact on the investment landscape – wholesale as well as retail – it may come through its capacity, as an almost completely open system, to link investors of all types directly into order and execution systems. but that is much easier said than done. there are a whole range of factors – technological limitations, regulatory issues, settlement and the like – which mean that the eventual impact of the internet is very uncertain. what are the implications of all this? first, electronic trading widens access to markets. it removes any need for geographical proximity to an exchange and relaxes any limit on the number of firms that can participate directly ( subject to any credit or regulatory constraints ). greater participation in a market increases liquidity and makes that market more attractive still. second, since firms can switch from one electronic trading platform to another, and since they can also often access exchanges cross border, broadly speaking any exchange can potentially compete for the business of any