Beijing's Informationization Nearing Average of Medium Developed Countries

Wang Jun, researcher of Beijing Economic Information Center, said in his investigation report that Beijing's informationization in general ranks first in China and overtakes the rest average in China.

According to the investigation report, the general index of Beijing's informationization reached 89.87 percent in 1998, about 18 percentage points higher than that of Shanghai and surpassing by a big margin China's average of 25.89 percent. Beijing's informationization has, so to speak, approached the average level of the world medium developed countries.

Wang Jun said that the developed countries have already completed the transformation from information industrialization to economic informationization and they are now engaged in the course of development towards social informationization. Yet Beijing is now forging towards economic informationization after its completion of the initial stage in the development of informationization.

Internet is quite effectively used in Beijing. About 58 percent of the Internet users pick up news and information from the Internet and the visits to the Internet by a net surfer in Beijing average 17 hours and he receives 21emails a week, according to the report.

Statistics show that by the end of 1999, the telephone-owing rate is 48 phonesets/100 persons in Beijing and 69 phonesets/100 persons in Beijing's urban districts respectively. There were altogether 3.76 million fixed phones and 1.17 million mobile phones used in Beijing and the backbone optical cable was 6,000 km long in Beijing at that time.

The highly-accomplished talents in informationization play a decisive role in Beijing's development. Beijing has attracted 1/3 of China's senior computer software talents, half of China's senior intelligent system integration talents, and about half of China's semiconductor experts, to come and work in Beijing. In addition, about 56 percent academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China's top experts on scientific research, work in Beijing as well.

Wang said, the next important work for Beijing is to establish a fair system of information industry so as to effectively avoid and crack down on information pollution and crimes.



By PD Online Staff Huang Ying


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