According to statistics released by the Beijing Information Office Tuesday, 90 percent of Beijing residents have mobile phones and two thirds of Beijing's households have computers. Beijing is leading China in the field of information and communication.

Statistics show that Beijing's fixed-line telephone users have reached 8.474 million in 2004, an increase of 24 percent year on year; its mobile phone subscribers exceeded 13.359 million last year, up 21 percent year on year. Every 100 Beijingers possess 90.6 mobile phones and every 100 farmers in Beijing have 102 cell phones. According to the survey conducted in Beijing's 18 districts and counties, by the end of last May, two thirds of Beijing's households have computers and about 11 percent have laptops. Every 100 rural households have 27 computers.

So far, Beijing tops China with a total of 125,297 websites, accounting for 19 percent of China's total. The city's registered Chinese domain names (excluding education domain names) total 87,371, accounting for more than 20 percent of China's total. Beijing's netizens number 4.02 million, accounting for 28 percent of the city's total population, the highest proportion in China.

(chinanews July 19, 2005)