Scott No: 2822-25
Serial number: 1997-24
Values in set: 4
Date of issue: December 10,1997
Designers: Wang Huming; Yan Bingwu;
Guo Chenghui
Size: 30*40mm
Perforation: 12
Sheet composition: 50
Printing process: offset

At the end of 1940s, the technical level and equipment of China's telecommunications were extremely backward, all the important equipment were imported from foreign countries, most of the telecom. lines were open aerial lines, most of the telegraphic terminals were manually operated, and the application of telex machine had just started.

Restoration and expansion of the telecommunications were conducted on a massive scale after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Remarkable progress has been made in the past 40 years or so, especially since the mid-1980s, and the industry has witnessed rapid development. The growth speed of the posts and telecommunications exceeded that of the national economy for the past 12 consecutive years. China has constructed a national public telecom. network integrating such advanced telecom. tools as fibre optical, digital microwave, satellite, program-controlled switch, cellular communications and data communications, linking the whole country with the rest of the world. The capacity of the national telephone network has exceeded 100 million lines. The number of telephones have reached more than 70 million. The number of subscribers for cellular telephones have reached over 10 million; The number of paging service users stand at about 30 million. The length of the national fibre optical cables stand at more than 130,000 kilometers. The telephone availability is 7.18 percent. National roaming service for cellular phones is now available. Automatic roaming service for the global cellular phone network has been made available with 17 countries and regions such as Singapore etc. The scale of China's telephone network now ranks the third in the world.

From 1996 to 2000, the annual investment in telecommunications industry in China will stand at about RMB 100 billion yuan. The eight south-north, eight east-west high-capacity fibre optical cables will be built across the country, and coupled with digital microwave and satellite communications network, they will form a wide-band, high speed and highly reliable information superhighway. By 2010, China will basically have completed the construction of a modern communications system, and its network scale, technical level and service quality will rank among the top few in the world.