February 4th, 1999
Ladies and gentlemen,Good morning!
I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the development of China's information industry and the major tasks this year.
1998 witnessed a continued rapid growth in China's information industry. The business revenue of the year reached RMB 229.5 billion yuan, up by 25.4% over the previous year and the investments in fixed assets of communications hit RMB 175.4 billion yuan, up 39.2%. The share of the newly-added value of communications in GDP rose from 2.4% in 1997 to 4.9%. In 1998, the manufacturing industry of electronic information products accomplished a sales revenue of RMB 310 billion yuan, up 14.1%, an industrial added value of RMB 74 billion yuan, up 13.8%, a tax and profit payment of RMB 23 billion yuan and an export volume of $27 billion.
In 1998, the process of separating the functions of government from that of enterprises accelerated and various reforms were being successfully implemented. The MII's restructuring was basically completed and the State Postal Bureau was successfully established. The delinkage of the enterprises directly under the Ministry from the MII was well under way. In response to the needs of the state restructuring and the development of posts and telecommunications, MII made a major decision to separate posts from telecommunications operations. By the end of 1998, PTAs at municipal, prefectural and county levels and the provincial post offices had been set up and begun their operations within the new system. The separation of posts from telecommunications created favorable conditions for the more rapid development of the two sectors, laying a solid foundation for the deepening of the reform in communications. Besides, rapid progress was made in the divestiture of radio paging assets from the P&T sectors and the restructuring on a nationwide basis. In the electronic industry, the big corporation strategy was advocated and gave rise to the pattern with the big enterprises as the mainstay leading the medium and small enterprises in the common development. The sales revenue of the top 100 electronic enterprises accounted for 62.3% of the whole industry.
In 1998, more efforts were made in macro-regulation and the industrial management. We implemented and improved the License Management System for the operation of telecommunications services, the network access of telecommunications equipment and the philatelic market, and harshly cracked down on the illegal activities such as the telephone number- associated fraud and unauthorized use of international dedicated lines to operate international telephone services in order to safeguard the state interests and the legitimate rights of the consumers. In addition, a series of measures were adopted to support the development of
China Unicom and other operators. The Interim Measures on Software Product Management was promulgated and implemented to strengthen the regulation of the software products and market; and the development plan for the application of IC cards as well as related management methods were mapped out, thus promoting the development of the IC card industry in China. In line with the principle of combining the introduction, assimilation and independent innovation, policy measures in support of the growth of mobile communications industry were worked out and the industrial standard of super VCD was stipulated so that the manufacturing and marketing activities of enterprises were further standardized. The major indexes for the development of the information industry in 1999 are as follows:The business revenue in communications will reach RMB 285.2 billion yuan, up 24% over the previous year, among which, the business revenue of posts will be RMB 33 billion yuan, up 13% and that of telecommunications RMB 252.2 billion yuan, up 24.9%. There will be an increase of 20 million lines of fixed telephone exchanges , 15.1 million fixed phone users, 14.7 million mobile communications subscribers and 3 million data and multi-media communications subscribers. The national teledensity will rise to 12.9% and the urban teledensity to 29%. In the manufacturing industry of electronic products, the sales revenue will mount to RMB 360 billion yuan, an increase of 16%; the newly added industrial value will be RMB 84 billion yuan ,a 14% rise; the total tax and profit payment will go up to RMB 26 billion yuan, 13% higher, and the export volume will be 28 billion USD, up 3%.
So much for my presentation. Thank you very much.