China's three major telecom operators have built 325,000 3G base stations and invested up to 160.9 billion yuan ($23 billion) last year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, YICAI.com reported Wednesday.

The ministry's statistics show development of 3G has attracted nearly 589 billion yuan of domestic investment and brought 36.4 billion yuan of direct spending and 14.1 billion yuan of indirect spending. It contributed 34.3 billion yuan directly and 141.3 indirectly to GDP growth. It has also created 260,000 jobs directly and 670,000 indirectly, according to the report.

By the end of 2009, China's 3G users have reached 13.25 million, 5.08 million of which are TD-SCDMA (a Chinese 3G standard) users, the report said.

The ministry said that China will keep encouraging and promoting the development of TD-SCDMA technology.