China intends to build two parallel nationwide data communications networks, Minister of Posts & Telecommunications Wu Jichuan has announced – but he gave no indication that China would lift its ban on foreign investment in its rapidly growing communications system, Reuter reports from Peking: The establishment of a socialist market economy depends first on the building of a complete legal system, and second on a well-informed economic information network, he wrote in the Communist Party People’s Daily, enoting that China is building two parallel systems, an information resources network and an information telecommunications network – the first of these networking databases of various types of information and the second an on-line operation of information resources and application systems via state-owned public telecommunications networks; no details of the telecommunications systems were given, but the 64Kbps Chinapac network went into commercial operation in March with more than 20,000 user nodes in 267 cities in all provinces, including Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang, linked digitally by fibre optic cables or satellite links.
