Chess in China 1998. Karpov's second visit took him to Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai and Guangzhou – four of the five largest cities in China. He also took the opportunity to launch the Chinese edition of his book "Disney's Guide to Chess" and appeared to autograph his books at major bookstores in each city he visited. There were 20,000 copies for the first printing and more than half were sold within one week of his visit. Karpov played a total of five exhibitions and once again, the immense publicity raised the interest of chess to another level. At present, in terms of media publicity,
Telecommunications industry in China billion mobile phone subscribers in China. The Chinese telecommunication sector’s growth rate was about 20% between 1997 and 2002. China fixed-line and mobile operators have invested an average of US$ 25 billion on network infrastructure in the last years, which will be more than all western European carriers combined. As a result, with 1.3 billion citizens, China has the world’s largest fixed-line and mobile network in terms of both network capacity and number of subscribers. China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 11, 2001 resulted in the gradual opening of the telecom services market to foreign companies.