"Neither new solely foreign-owned enterprises nor joint-venture is allowed to tap this industry," a senior official of MII said.

Meanwhile, current domestic foreign mobile phone enterprises have to follow MII's regulations to export at least 60 per cent of the products to other countries.

He also noted that the foreign-investment mobile phone producers are required to apply more than half China-made mobile phone components in production before the end of next year; besides, the implementation of the regulations will affect their selling scale permitted in China.

Statistics from MII show China's sales volume of mobile phone this year will reach 28 million, and among the first half year, domestic brands have taken up 10 per cent of the market shares, which seems relatively easier to meet this year's goal of 15 per cent market shares.

Lured by booming mobile phone market in China, which is expected to have a subscriber increase to 240 million from current 80 million, domestic mobile phone producers are making efforts to improve functions and appearances of products.

For example, domestic home appliances bellwether Haier has developed radiation-proof mobile phones with cute appearances.

A market survey conducted by State Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision last month showed all the native mobile phones are mostly of the same qualities as foreign mobile phones, in terms of signal sending and receiving function, securities and other factors.

(china Daily 12/07/2000)