Transport, postal and telecom services 2017

Transportation

In 2017, total freight traffic reached 47.9 billion tons, up by 9.3 percent from 2016, and the freight flows were 19.61 trillion ton-kilometers, up by 5.1 percent. The volume of freight handled throughout the year by ports above a designated size totaled 12.6 billion tons, up 6.4 percent from the previous year. Of this total, freight for foreign trade was 4.0 billion tons, up 5.7 percent. Container shipping of ports above a designated size reached 236.80 million standard containers, up by 8.3 percent.

The total passenger traffic in 2017 reached 18.5 billion people, down by 2.6 percent from 2016, and the passenger flows were 3,281.3 billion person-kilometers, up by 5.0 percent.

The total number of motor vehicles for civilian use reached 217.43 million (including 8.20 million tri-wheel motor vehicles and low-speed trucks) by the end of 2017, up 11.8 percent from that at the end of 2016, of which privately-owned vehicles numbered 186.95 million, up 12.9 percent. The total number of cars for civilian use stood at 121.85 million, up 12.0 percent, of which privately-owned cars numbered 114.16 million, up 12.5 percent.

Post service

The turnover of post services totaled 976.4 billion yuan, up 32.0 percent from 2016. The number of mail deliveries, parcel deliveries and express deliveries reached 3.15 billion, 30 million and 40.06 billion respectively. The revenue from express deliveries reached 495.7 billion yuan.

Telecommunication Service

The turnover of telecommunication services totaled 2.76 trillion yuan, up 76.4 percent from 2016. The newly-increased capacity of the mobile phone switchboard was 236.46 million lines with the total capacity reaching 2,421.86 million lines. By the end of 2017, there were 1,611.25 million phone subscribers in China, of whom 1,417.49 million were mobile phone users.

Mobile phone coverage rose to 102.5 sets per 100 people. The number of fixed broadband internet users reached 348.54 million, an increase of 51.33 million from the previous year. Of this total, fixed fiber-optic broadband internet users amounted to 293.92 million, an increase of 66.27 million. The number of mobile broadband users was 1,131.52 million, an increase of 190.77 million. Mobile internet traffic was 24.6 billion gigabytes, up 162.7 percent from the previous year.

The number of internet users was 772 million, up by 40.74 million. Of this total, 753 million were mobile internet surfers, an increase of 57.34 million. The coverage of the internet was 55.8 percent nationwide and 35.4 percent in rural areas. Software revenue of the software and IT services industry totaled 5.50 trillion yuan, up 13.9 percent.