Modern Information Technology

More Beijing residents get their daily information through the Internet, and the use of Web-based blogs is in vogue.

By December 2005, Beijing had 4.28 million netizens, accounting for 28.7 percent of the city's population, No. 1 in the country. About 3.7 million netizens used broadband Internet services, accounting for 5.7 percent of the broadband users in the country. Netizens accounted for 35.8 percent and 7.5 percent of the urban and rural populations. There were 2.76 million Internet-linked computers in Beijing, which means that for every 100 residents, there are 18.5 Internet-linked computers, and every 100 netizens have 64.5 Internet-linked computers.

During the Tenth Five-Year Plan, the added value of Beijing's postal-service business grew by 5.7 percent. The added value of the information transmission, computer service and software industries increased by 16.6 percent. The business value of the post and telecommunications industry rose to 41.75 billion yuan (US$5.22 billion), an increase of 21.3 percent over 2004 and 94.4 percent more than in 2000. Business values for postal services grew by 7.8 percent over 2004 totals to 3.35 billion yuan (US$420 million), and the business values for telecommunications services were reported at 38.4 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion), an increase of 22.7 percent over 2004.

With 1.03 million new subscribers, there were 9.5 million fixed-line telephone subscribers by the end of 2005. Of this total, there were 8.6 million urban and 955,000 rural telephone users. For every 100 people in Beijing, there were 62.7 lines, an increase of 28.3 lines per 100 people more than in 2000. New mobile phone subscribers totalled 1.3 million in 2005, an increase in total users to 14.7 million. For every 100 people, there were 97 mobile phones, 70.5 more phones per 100 people than in 2000.