CHINA

By JOSHUA COOPER RAMO

The Chinese are obsessed by numbers. They are quick to buttonhole visitors and point out that Shanghai's skyline is populated by 15% of the world's construction cranes, or that Beijingers can buy a Big Mac at one of 42 McDonald's restaurants. Last week WU JICHUAN, who runs China's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, unwrapped a whopper: the nation has 100 million phone lines, second only to the U.S. Just two years ago, officials said they hoped to hit 50 million phone lines by the year 2000. Now they're expecting to surpass the U.S.'s 160 million as the millennium rolls in. This is especially remarkable progress, given where the Chinese started. As recently as 1985, for example, the eastern city of Nanjing had just four nonbusiness phone lines. And the 100 million lines are really just the start: the plan calls for 600 million by 2020. American firms such as AT&T and SPRINT are waiting to cash in, but Wu says the country won't open up to Candice Bergen just yet. Instead the Chinese government will continue to control the lucrative telecom monopoly. The most glorious numbers, bureaucrats realize, come with renminbi signs in front.

--By Joshua Cooper Ramo