Sales in China's electronic information sector rose 23.7 percent to 4.75 trillion yuan (608.97billion U.S. dollars) in 2006, according to a report from the Ministry of Information Industry.

The report predicted the sector would maintain steady and fast development in 2007, with sales growing 22 percent.

Last year China produced 480 million mobile phones, up 58.2 percent, 93.36 million personal computers, up 15.5 percent, 66.95 million digital cameras, up 21.2 percent and 83.75 million color televisions, up 1.1 percent.

Foreign-invested firms -- including Sino-foreign joint ventures, Sino-foreign cooperative firms and exclusively foreign-funded firms -- were the main force in the sector, which was becoming increasingly internationalized and reliant on foreign trade, said the report.

These firms contributed to 80 percent of the total revenues, profits and exports in China's electronic information sector. The sector reported exports and imports totaling 651.7 billion U.S. dollars last year, accounting for 37 percent of China's foreign trade and 15 percent of the global trade of electronic information products.

The country exported 364 billion U.S. dollars worth of electronic information products last year, up 35.7 percent, while imports surged 30.5 percent to 287.7 billion U.S. dollars. On the world markets, 47 percent of the mobile phones sold, 40 percent of the personal computers and 48 percent of the color TVs were made or assembled in China.

But Chinese electronic information products have been involved in many international trade frictions as they have gained an increasing world market share, said the report. These products were facing greater risks of anti-dumping charges, technical barriers and intellectual property rights lawsuits, while Chinese companies often suffered from unfair treatment when investing overseas, said the report.

China Unicom, one of the country's leading mobile phone operators, added 2.8 million new subscribers in January and February, company sources said on Wednesday. At the end of February, China Unicom's had 145.2 million subscribers. In February the company added 1.46 million new users, while in January it added 1.38 million subscribers.

In February, China Telecom, a leading fix-lined telephone operator in the nation, added 210,000 new fixed-line phone costumers. In January it had 250,000 new costumers, company sources said.

Li Ping, vice president of China Telecom, said his company's declining growth rate is due to the expansion of mobile phone subscribers. At the end of February, the company's total subscribers numbered 223.5 million.

Data from the Ministry of Information Industry show there are in China 829 million phone users, 461 million of them used mobile phones while 368 million were fixed-line phone users. The gap between the number of mobile phone and fixed-line phone users continues to widen and is soon expected to reach 100 million.

The ministry predicts the number of new phone subscribers will increase by 72 million to reach 900 million nationwide in 2007. The increase will include almost 60 million new mobile phone users.

The transaction volumes of China's real estate hit a record of nine billion U.S. dollars in 2006, an increase of 69 percent year on year, according to a recent research by Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL).

Investment of foreign funds in the country's real estate market accounted for 60 percent of the total last year, the research said. Cross-border investment represented 32 percent of the total investment in the Asia-Pacific region, up from 29 percent, it reported.

Investors would still be interested in the Asia-Pacific region since the booming real estate market provided them with opportunities of long-term returns, said Guy Hollis, a senior official with the JLL.

JLL is a leading real estate money management and services firmwith some 150 offices worldwide and operating in more than 450 cities in more than 50 countries and regions

China's economic growth is set to slow in 2010 when the dependent population rises to a level that cancels out the country's "demographic dividend", which has existed since the mid-1960s, according to a recent World Bank global development report. The dependency ratio - the gap between the working population and those too young or old to work - in China was at its lowest in 1968, allowing the country to spend less on dependent groups and more on economic development.

China's advantageous population structure has contributed to 27 percent of economic growth, a similar figure to that in Japan and Singapore, but a country's demographic dividend usually lasts for 40 years until the aging problem looms.

Official statistics show China currently has 144 million people who are over 60 years old, accounting for 11 percent of the 1.3 billion population. But the number will reach 160 million in 2010, 200 million in 2015 and 400 million in 2044, which will result in huge pressures being exerted on the pension and healthcare systems.

"China has to invest more in education and training to raise productivity and steer its manufacturing industries to create high value-added products," an expert advised on condition of anonymity. "Otherwise, when the demographic dividend is over," he said, "everything will slow down."

From 1950 to 1980, China's population exploded from 500 million to 1 billion, prompting the country to start its family planning policy in the late 1970s.