The information industry has become China's economic mainstay.
In 2004, the added value of China's information industry, the
world's third largest, stood at 950 billion yuan. Output value,
sales and profits of electronic and telecoms manufacturing all
outstripped those of traditional industries, making the greatest
contribution to national economic growth.
By the end of 2004, China had boasted 74,429 MB export broadband
capacity, 670,000 websites, 430,000 China-coded domain names, 41.6
million computers with Internet access, and 94 million Internet
users, ranking second in the world.? A host of web-based
services have thrived, among them network education, online
banking, E-commerce, Internet advertising, news, video, and charged
postal services, Internet Protocol (IP) telephone, SMS
text-messaging, online recruitment, information services and
games.?
Posts and telecommunications are important elements of the
information industry. After decades of construction and
development, a national postal network has taken shape, with
Beijing and other major cities as the centers, linking all cities
and rural areas. As for the construction of the telecommunications
network, a basic transmission network featuring large capacity and
high speed is now in place. It covers the whole country, with the
optical cable as the mainstay, supplemented by satellite and
digital microwave systems. By 2000 China had completed its "8
Across, 8 Down" optical cable grid, linking the capitals of all
provinces and autonomous regions and over 90 percent of counties
and cities. Every provincial or autonomous regional capital, with
the exception of the Tibetan capital Lhasa, is connected by at
least two optical cables. By the end of 2004, the nation's optical
cables extended 3.377 million km. In coastal and economically
advanced inland areas, optical cable has reached villages, towns,
urban residential communities, and high-rise buildings, thus
becoming the main technology for transmitting information. China
has participated in the construction of a number of international
land and sea-bed optical cables, such as the China-Japan,
China-ROK, and Asia-Europe sea cables, and Asia-Europe and
China-Russia land optical cables. China initiated the construction
of the 27,000-km Asia-Europe land optical cable, the world's
longest, passing through 20 countries in its journey from Shanghai
to Frankfurt in Germany. So far, China has established
telecommunication business relations with more than 200 countries
and regions in the world.?
At the end of 2004, China had 647.26 million telephone subscribers,
312.44 million fixed lines and 334.82 million mobile phone
subscribers, constituting the world's second-largest telephone
network. All cities above the county level had program-controlled
switchboards, and program-controlled telephones made up 99.8
percent of the total. There were 8.7 million circuits, all of them
automated, for long-distance business. China started mobile
telecommunication business in 1987 and the mobile network now
covers all large and medium-sized cities, and more than 2,800 small
cities and county seats.? International roaming service exists
with over 150 countries and regions all over the world.
 |
The public data telecommunications network has taken initial shape,
with group data exchange network, digital data network, computer
Internet, multimedia telecom network, and frame relay network as
the mainstays, covering over 90 percent of counties and cities in
China, making it one of the world's largest public data
telecommunications networks. Radio and TV networks continue to
develop rapidly, and the number of radio and TV users is expected
to exceed 200 million by 2005, when almost all villages in China
will have access to radio and TV broadcasting.?
