(19 September 2001) The amount of foreign capital actually used in China this year will probably reach US$46 billion, an increase of more than 10 percent over last year, according to Ma Xiuhong, assistant to the minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC)

Ma pointed out that the recent terrorist attacks in USA would not affect the estimated amount of growth of the foreign capital actually used in China this year, according to a report ), said on Sept.18 in Hexun Caijing (Homeway Financial News).

She said that from last year until the first half of this year, the amount of the contracts involving foreign investment in China grew substantially, and the foreign capital actually used in China this year was mainly the foreign investment from last year's contracts.

According to statistics from MOFTEC, during the first eight months of this year, China approved 16,344 new projects of enterprises with foreign investment with an increase of 18.55 percent and the total amount of foreign investment of the contracts was US$43.748 billion with an increase of 31.56 percent over the same period of last year. The amount of the foreign capital actually used in China was US$27.439 billion with an increase of 20.39 percent over the same period of last year.

(12 September 2001) A new survey of Chinese Web sites shows that while there are nearly a quarter of a million, fully one third have only one employee.

On September 8, the Information Technology Office of the central government published the survey that indicated that although there are a large number of Web sites in China, their strength is very weak, according to the Sept. 10 Jinghua Shibao (Beijing Times).

The survey said there were 692,490 domain names registered in China and that there were 238,249 Web sites with 159 million pages and 45,598 online databases. The survey has also revealed that Web sites established in the last year account for 49.2 percent of the total and of these, 65 percent have three or fewer employees, including 31.6 percent of them with only one employee.

It was the first time for China to conduct such a survey

(25 September 2001) China may be home to thousands of clunky state-owned enterprises, millions of displaced workers and an ever-widening gap between the rural poor and urban rich, but when it comes to its modernization ambitions, the nation has no equal.

An official from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television
(SARFT) said on Sept. 20 that within four years, digital TV will be in widespread use in China and that within six years the country will have the largest satellite-TV and radio subscriber base in the world, the Sept. 20 Beijing Wanbao (Beijing Evening News) reported

The official said that SARFT’s plan for the development of satellite-TV and radio programming has "passed official assessment," and that by 2007 such broadcasts will have 60 million subscribers.

The satellite-broadcast industry will generate more than 20 billion yuan (US$2.42 billion) a year by that time, he said, and will enable 100 million people in remote areas to watch TV.

China will have its own live satellite-transmission system, the official added.

Currently, developed countries have live satellite-transmission systems, while China uses satellites for relay transmissions only and does not transmit TV programs directly to subscribers.

Competition for satellite-TV and radio programming is heating up, and some foreign players have already entered the market in anticipation of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization early next year.

This makes it "extremely urgent" for China to produce its own satellite-TV programs, the official said.

By the end of 2005, China will have made the transition from analog to digital TV, the official noted. In fact, the transmission of analog programs from China Central TV Station Channel 1 will have been discontinued by Dec. 31, 2005.