Lu said that the recent 10 years have seen the annual output value of information industry grow by 25 percent, 3 times faster than China's GDP growth. In the year 2000, China's GDP grew by 7.1 percent comprising 1 percent contributed by information industry.

This year, the manufacturing industry of the electronic information product continues to pose a robust growth, with its growth rate at 32.9 percent in the first half of this year, an increase of 1.3 percent over the same period of last year.

The industry realized 584.1 billion yuan (invariable price of 1990) in output value, up 32.9 percent over the same period of last year, and 378.1 billion yuan (current price) in business sales volume, up 34 percent as against that of last year. The industry's production and sales rate was 97.7 percent, and export delivery value stood at 121.7 billion yuan, a rise of 33.6 percent.

Lu said that telecommunication operation sector plays a leading role in China's information industry, so far, the sector still maintains a pacesetting speed in its development. From last January to June, China registered another 51.672 million new telephone users with the total number hitting 281 million in the whole country. Among those, local telephone users increased by 20.177 million to reach 164 million and mobile phone users increased by 31.495 million, witnessing the total number to top 117 million. China registered 3.951 million new Internet users to bring the total to 12.469 million. Telephone usage rate also increased to reach 24.4 sets per 100 people, a rise of 4.3 percent over that by the end of last year. What is more fascinating is that 83 percent of the rural areas can be accessed by telephone.

During the "10th Five Year Plan" period, Lu said the main targets for China's information industry are: the growth rate to exceed 20 percent with its market scale and exports revenue to increase by one fold over that in 2000 and added value to account for 7 percent in the GDP growth.

(People's Daily 07/23/2001)