As is known from the ongoing National Information Industry Working Conference now on in Beijing, by 2005 China's communication service would yield 1 trillion yuan averaging an annual growth of 23 percent, of which postal service is to stand at 80 billion yuan and telecommunication 920 billion yuan. With fixed and mobile telephone networks leaping to world first, China will have a total of telephone users around 500 million to show a rising coverage from 20.1 percent to about 40 percent and nearly every administrative village is to be included. IT products are to earn 1.5 trillion yuan at an annual growth of 20 percent. Sales for software industry would stand at 250 billion yuan and exports at US$100bn, one-fold increase over 2000.

The main tasks of China's IT industry 2001-05 are:

First, headway will have to be made on the "bottleneck" of bandwidth so as to build flexible, efficient and safe information infrastructures with outsize capacity and advanced technology. The postal industry should strengthen electronic information and financial services on top of traditional business scales.

Second, through progress made in core technologies a scientific research and production system setup, based on technological innovation and of rational structure, will be built to bring a scale benefit and sharpen China's competitive edge on international markets.

Third, efforts will be made on the application of IT technologies to achieve resources sharing and, with focus laid on reforming traditional industries, to press forward information-centered construction.

Fourth, governmental functions are to be enhanced to form an efficient, well-supported industry management system operating under law and, to create a favorable environment in regard of regulations and market competitions for the development of IT industry.

Fifth, in-depth enterprise reforms are to be carried out to frame an economic operation mechanism centering on a new system buildup and innovations in technology and management.

(People's Daily 02/19/2001)