A researcher with Beijing Economic Information Center recently proved that Beijing overwhelmingly leads all other Chinese cities in developing Information Technology (IT).

According to the analysis made by Wang Jun, which is compiled into a Blue Paper on Beijing's development and published by the Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House, the index of information in 1998 was 89.87 percent, 18 percentage points more than Shanghai, which was ranked the second in the field.

The average index nationwide was only 25.89 percent, Wang said.

As for the information level, Beijing has surpassed some developed countries, according to the analysis.

A total of 58 percent of Internet users in the Chinese capital obtain useful information through the web. An Internet surfer has himself gets online an average 17 hours a week.

Statistics also show that by the end of 1999, Beijing had 3.76 million residential phones and 1.17 million mobile phone subscribers.

In 1999, the added value of IT industries exceeded 50 billion yuan (6.02 billion U.S. dollars); employees of IT enterprises reached one million; the 21 IT companies out of the country's top 100 took up 28.3 percent of the total sales value.

Meanwhile, more than one-third of Internet Service Provider and Internet Content Provider in China ran their business in Beijing.

In addition, one-third of the nation's computer software engineers, as well as half of the professionals in systematical integration and semi-conductors are working in Beijing.

(Eastday 02/20/01)