A brief history of the ICT industries reveals four main facets of development. First, in the telecom industry, China"s rapid development has had a large impact on the world telecom industry. According to Ministry of Information Industry (MII) statistics for the first half of 2003, China has the world"s largest telecom subscriber base, with nearly 500 million fixed-line and mobile subscribers. Overall telecom operator service revenue grew 14 percent to US$50 billion in 2002, with over 98 percent of this revenue accounted for by the four major state-owned operators.
In the cable TV industry, China has a rather unique history. Long considered part of the state propaganda apparatus, the State Administration of Radio, Film & Television (SARFT) has traditionally been responsible for both the production as well as the transmission of content. To de-politicize the business of video transmission. SARFT has been taking steps to separate the stations (i.e., content) from the net works in recent years.
In the computer/Internet industry. China has developed rapidly. Traditionally heavily focused on hardware, to the relative neglect of software, China"s computer industry has been exposed to international competition for quite some time and has developed world-class domestic suppliers, in addition, China has over 50 million Internet users and Chinese is expected to become the most widely used language on the web within this decade.
Lastly, in the electronics manufacturing industry, China has in recent years emerged as a manufacturing base, as significant portions of the supply/assembly chain (most notably in computer and telecom equipment) have moved to the PRC. China"s electronics sector is ranked first among all of China"s industries in terms of foreign investment attracted, export volume, industrial value added, and contribution to GDP growth.
China"s overall ICT industry can be viewed as growing very rapidly in many areas. Indeed, ICT constitutes a major area of China"s overall growth. In the first quarter of 2003, China"s overall industrial sector"s industrial value-added grew by 17.2 percent year on year, compared to 10.9 percent growth a year earlier. Nearly one-third of that growth, or 5.8 points out of 17.2 percentage points of growth, came from two sectors: telecommunications and electronics.