China has become the biggest telecom product market in the world, according to sources from the 2nd APEC Investment Expo-"Sino-ROK IT Industry Investment Cooperation Forum" held in Yantai, Shandong Province.
Liu Linru, Deputy-director of Planning Department of the Ministry of Information Industry told that the telephone users across the country has totaled some 2290 million households, of which, 1440 million are fixed phone users and 85.26 million the mobile ones. The rate of telephone popularization in the country has come to 20.1 percent, of which 29 percent go to the urban areas. In addition, 6.7 percent of urban population are the MP users. Today, the number of fixed telephone and the MP users in China ranks the second in the world.
Over the past five years, the national electronic information industry (EII) has kept a stable increase rate of over 20 percent annually with its industrial added values up thrice over the GDP of the same period. The proportion of EII in the GDP rose from 0.8 percent in 1995 to 1.5 percent last year.
Meanwhile, the gross industrial production value of EII, mostly the sectors of manufacture and software industry exceeded 1000 billion yuan.
(People's Daily 06/13/2001)
