China's fast growing high-tech sector which accounted for 4.85 percent of the gross domestic product last year has edged into the forefront of high-tech products manufacturing worldwide, said a senior industry regulator over the weekend.

"China has become a major high-tech products supplier in the world," Xu Qin, head of the High-tech Industry Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said a national working conference on the sector.

According to Xu, China's high-tech sector generated a value-added output of 574 billion yuan (US$70.8 billion) between January and September this year, a year-on-year growth of 19 percent. The sector's export increased by 33 percent from the year-earlier level to US$150 billion in the same period.

The official predicted the sector's sales income to exceed 3.3 trillion yuan (US$406.9 billion) for the whole year and the value-added output to reach 780 billion yuan (US$96.2 billion), compared with 2.7 trillion yuan (US$332.9 billion) and 660 billion yuan (US$81.4 billion) last year, respectively.

In the 2001-2005 period, China's high-tech sector posted an average annual growth of 30 percent and 20 percent, respectively, in sales income and value-added output.

An integrated regime of high-tech manufacturing has taken shape on the Chinese mainland, Xu said, with electronics production taking the lead and biological and aviation and space business growing rapidly.

It is reported that China ranked first in the world in terms of the production of cell phones, programmed switches, personal computers, monitors, color TV sets and laser disc players.

With manufacturers mainly distributing over the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas and the areas around the Bohai Rim, the high-tech sector has become a major driving force for China's export. Last year, the sector sold abroad US$165.5 billion worth of products, accounting for more than 25 percent of the nation's total export which made it the largest exporter by industry.

(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2005)