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Telephones: 105 million (1998 est.).
Telephone system: Domestic and international services are increasingly available
for private use; unevenly distributed domestic system serves principal cities,
industrial centres, and all townships; antiquated internal service with public
telephones in hotels and shops displaying a telephone unit sign. It is often
easier to make international phone calls from China than it is to make calls
internally.
Country code: 86
Outgoing international code: 00
Domestic: interprovincial fiber-optic trunk lines and cellular telephone systems
have been installed; a domestic satellite system with 55 earth stations is
in place.
International: satellite earth stations-5 Intelsat (4 Pacific Ocean and 1
Indian Ocean), 1Intersputnik (Indian Ocean Region) and 1 Inmarsat (Pacific
and Indian Ocean Regions); several international fiber-optic links to Japan,
South Korea, Hong Kong, Russia, and Germany.
Fax: A growing number of hotels offer fax facilities but often only incoming.
Rates are generally expensive.
Post: Service to Europe takes about a week. Tourist hotels usually have their
own post offices. All postal communications to China should be addressed
'People's Republic of China'.
Radio stations: AM 569, FM NA, shortwave 173 .
Radios: 216.5 million (1992 est.).
Television stations:
209 (China Central Television, government-owned; in addition there are
31 provincial TV stations and nearly 3,000 city TV stations) (1997)
.
Televisions: 300 million .
Main national newspapers:
There are 1,775 newspapers. Renmin Ribao is the CCP daily. The main
English-language daily is the China Daily and China Travel.
There is also the weekly news
magazine Beijing Review, with editions in English, French,
Spanish, Japanese and German.
National newspapers include The People's Daily and The Guangming
Daily, with many provinces having their own local dailies as well.
As a result of a more open, market oriented, people's access to
non-official sources of information has increased. TV ownership
is rising
with living standards. Many sets, especially in the populous south
and
east, are
tuned to Hong Kong
stations. The growing number of satellite-dish owners has
an even wider choice. These changes have undermined but not ended
censorship.
Recent
efforts to
control satellite-dish ownership have had limited success,
but the printed media remain
on a tight rein. Papers considered undesirable have their
licenses removed in periodic clean-ups. Millions still buy, but
few
now read, Renmin Ribao
(People's Daily), with its editorials defending revolutionary
purity.
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