Visitors take photos at the Tian'anmen Square on Monday during the National Day holiday. Tourism is a key target for the RFID industry. Chen Xiaogen / for China Daily

Growth in anti-counterfeiting devices may lead to widespread applications

BEIJING - An increase in tourism and large-scale events, such as the Expo 2010 Shanghai and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, has created a sudden growth in demand for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tickets, industry experts have said.

RFID is a wireless automatic recognition technology that makes counterfeiting difficult.

The number of tourists in the country is estimated to reach 3.3 billion by 2015, the China National Tourism Administration has said. In addition, the number of event visitors is expected to reach 500 million. These two industries will become the main consumers of RFID entrance tickets.

There will be demand for between 300 and 400 million RFID tickets in the coming three years, said Wang Zhifa, the administration's deputy chief.

"The trend will remain progressive, and the industry will grow at about 15 percent a year," Wang said.

The domestic RFID market reached 7.36 billion yuan ($1.10 billion) in 2009, research by CCID Consulting Co Ltd said.

The RFID entrance ticket combines traditional anti-counterfeiting print, digital safety and automatic recognition technologies, improving forgery prevention and entrance efficiency at large-scale events.

China Golddeal Investment was selected as the RFID entrance ticket provider for Expo 2010 Shanghai and the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games - the first time the country used RFID tickets for a major public event.

"China's use of RFID in entrance tickets shows the country has shifted from theory to practice in its approach to the technology," said Wang Mingxu, an analyst for Orient Securities Co Ltd, a Shanghai-based comprehensive securities company.

Over the past two years, the State-owned enterprise has provided more than 100 million RFID entrance tickets for large-scale events.

China Golddeal Investment's chairman, Zhang Xu, said he expected RFID technology will be used in 80 percent of entrance tickets in five years.

Zhang also said the company has become a global cooperative partner for the 2011 Xi'an International Horticultural Exposition. It has also applied to become the entrance ticket provider for the 2014 London Olympic Games.

He believed RFID ticket technology will advance to provide more functions than just recognition.

"The RFID tickets of the future will be able to be rewritten and even use Global Positioning System software to determine the ticket's location," Zhang said.

RFID could be used in other areas of daily life, such as transportation and residential community management, he added.

China Daily

(China Daily 10/08/2010 page16)