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China Now World's Second Largest Phone Users
China ranks second in the world for its network capacity and number of telephone users, with 1.25 million kilometers of optical fiber and 230 million users of fixed and mobiles phones.
Minister of Information Industry Wu Jichuan said in an opening speech at the symposium focusing on e-commerce and paperless trading on Friday, February 9, that 20.1 percent of the Chinese population now own telephones.
Wu attributed the increase to the sustained and rapid development of the country's information industry in the past five years.
He said China's achievement in infrastructure construction is particularly noteworthy, citing the fact that the country's telecommunication network, once a manual analog network for single business, has transformed to an automatic, digital and large capacity network for diverse business.
Wu said China has acquired many state-of-the-art technologies including optical fiber, digital microwave, satellite communication, program controlled switching, mobile telecommunications, data communication and the Internet.
He said year 2000 saw a 16-fold increase in the rate of China' s backbone network and a 100-fold increase in bandwidth. While national telecommunication systems were established in finance, trade, customs and taxation sectors, e-training, e-clinics and e-media began to flourish as well.
Meanwhile, Wu said over 260,000 Chinese websites and 8.9 million Internet accessible computers are now available to cater to the needs of 22.5 million Internet users in China.
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