Ji Yunshi, governor of Jiangsu, made the announcement at last week's provincial meeting on the information industry.

According to Ji, the industry's added value in 2005 made up 8 percent of the provincial gross domestic product (GDP), while in 2000 it contributed less than 4 per cent to the GDP.

Ji stressed the need for construction of broadband facilities and the integration of telecommunications, television and computer networks.

"Jiangsu will become a national base for the information technology production industry and software industry," said Ji.

Joint ventures with foreign multinationals have become a major forces in the development of Jiangsu's information technology industry.

The province's software industry boasted a sales revenue of 2.3 billion yuan (US$277 million) last year. The Jiangsu Software Park has already been put into operation and the Nanjing, Changzhou, Suzhou and Wuxi software parks are under construction.

To accelerate the industry's development, Jiangsu will adopt a "Big Corporation'' strategy and support 10 electronic companies with the potential to achieve an annual sales revenue of 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) by 2005, according to Wang Min, vice-governor of Jiangsu.

"A third generation mobile communications network will be introduced soon and multimedia broadband facilities will be constructed throughout the province," said Wang.

The number of Internet users in Jiangsu has amounted to 2.2 million, ranking it the second biggest in China. More than 3,600 government organizations and 160,000 enterprises log onto the Internet.

Major cities of the province are all now experimenting with broadband, including Suzhou, Yangzhou, Changzhou and Wuxi.

In Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu, broadband IP networks have been finished, and opened to the public this month.

By the end of June, 2002, every building and neighbourhood in the city will be linked to a multimedia broadband, and Nanjing residents will be able to enjoy an Internet surfing speed 200 times faster than that of today's speed via telephone lines.

To date, more than 1,000 buildings and neighbourhoods are connected to the broadband where their users can take online courses and receive medical care.

(People's Daily 04/19/2001)