Shandong Shangde Software, a digital archives system developer in the Weifang Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone, has made great strides in the construction of China's digital archives.

Three archives in Weifang's Zhucheng, Shouguang cities and Changle county passed national digital archives system tests at the end of 2017.

Weifang Archive has become one of 15 archives in China recognized as a national demonstration digital archive. All those archives were developed by Shangde.

Wang Wenxue founded Shangde in 2007. At that time, people had little knowledge about digital archives, Wang said. However, he believed the digital archive market has a strong development potential in China.

Shangde received its first big order from Weifang finance bureau in 2008.

The process to covert paper-based documents into a digital version was hard, because documents were written or printed on different types of paper and some were very old, which required people to take extreme care, Wang said.

"I vowed to make it a demonstration project for Shangde. It was easy to complete the work, but it was hard to make it excellent."

China's digital archive market started booming in 2012. The government also undertook many measures to regulate the market, aiming at maintaining its long-term development.

"The government raised the requirements on digital archive system developers, which was good news for us," Wang said. "It has created more opportunities for Shangde."

Shangde was recognized as a national professional digital archives development and management company in 2014.

Only 11 companies gained such recognition in that year, of which 10 companies were in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in Guangdong province. Shangde was then qualified to deal with the most sensitive confidential archives in China.

Figures from the company show that it has built hundreds of digital archives across China in the past 11 years. In 2017, its revenue reached 50 million yuan ($7.89 million) and it employed more than 200 people.

In 2018, Shangde will pay more attention on financing and exploring markets to maintain its growth, Wang said.

Liu Yinghong contributed to this story