The Fourth China Investment & Trade Symposium opened its "Risk Investment and IT Industry Development Seminar" on Sunday afternoon. Jiang Shaobing, inspector of the Planning Department of Ministry of Information Technology, said in his speech that China's telecommunication industry has developed swiftly in a dozen or so years and become one of the departments that grew at the highest speed and achieved the best comprehensive profits.

As sources say, by the end of June, the total capacity of the switchboards of China's telephone network reached 170 million. Telephone subscribers hit 127 million, covering all the counties and cities and 80 percent of the townships and villages.

Besides, the number of China's mobile phone users has reached 60 million, and Internet users, 16.9 million. The general scale of China's telephone network and mobile phone network have ranked second and third in the world respectively.

Nowadays, China has basically completed a large-capacity and high-speed nationwide transmitting network which takes optical fibers as the primary factor and satellites and digital micro-wave as supplementary factor.

Jiang thinks that in the coming several years, China's telecommunication industry will continue to advance at an annual 22 percent rate. By 2005, information technology such as communication and electronic manufacture will develop to a new stage, among which the general scale of telephone network and mobile phone network will rank first in the world.

(People’s Daily)