Following are the facts and figures about the consumption pattern of Chinese people in the ninth Five-year Plan period (1996-2000), provided by the State Development Planning Commission.

Food consumption accounted for 41.9 percent of the total expense of urban residents in 1999, dropping 8 percentage points from 1995, and 52.6 percent of rural people's expense, down 6 percentage points.

Food consumption is expected to drop to 40 percent of the total expense among urban residents and 50 percent among rural people by 2000.

Urban residents have 9.8-square-meter living space per capita in the first four years of the Plan, up from 1995's 8.1 square meters, while living space in rural areas rose from 21 sq m to 24.4 sq m per capita.

Chinese fixed telephone users totaled 110 million in 1999, with 43.24 million using mobile phones.

And the number has topped 200 million by September this year, 135 million of which are fixed phone users and 65 million mobile phone users.

(People's Daily 10/04/2000)