Vice-Minister of Information Industry of China Jiang Yaoping said on Tuesday that China will take more effective measures to bridge the digital divide between its urban and rural areas.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the China Day of the current International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecom World 2006, Jiang said that the rural and urban areas of the country are still provided with unbalanced level of information industry infrastructure.

Jiang said that as a developing country, China still has a long way to go in providing universal telecommunication services.

In the past years, China has made some progress in this regard through carrying out projects like "telephone linkage to villages",said Jiang, citing that 98.8 percent of Chinese villages are now connected with outside world with telephones.

China Day, the first in the history of ITU's Telecom World exhibition in 34 years, is seen as a climax of exchanges between Chinese telecommunication industry and its counterparts around the world.

Secretary-General of the ITU Yoshio Utsumi and Secretary for Finance of Hong Kong government Henry Tang also gave speeches at Tuesday's opening ceremony of the China Day.

(Xinhua News Agency December 6, 2006)