China to make postal service more market-oriented

China will make effort to promote its postal service so that it is more market-oriented while ensuring universal postal service, according to Liu Andong, Deputy Postmaster General of State Post Bureau of China here Tuesday.

At the Strategic Conference 2002 of Universal Postal Union (UPU) which opened here Tuesday, Liu said that as a contracting party of the UPU Convention, China is committed to providing universal postal service for the domestic citizens. The Chinese government has always been paying much attention to ensuring the communication right of citizens, to the universal postal service and to the development of postal service, he said.

The Chinese official said that in the past three years, China Post has enhanced its construction speed of postal outlets, improved service quality and made it more available all over the different communities and households.

According to Statistics from the State Post Bureau, the number of post offices and outlets counted more than 77,000 in 2001 with almost 60,000 located in rural areas, which tremendously facilitated the universal postal service.

In the same time, China has also initiated market-oriented services, striving to take an active part in the competition, expand the market share, increase the postal income, meet the social demands and make up for the loss brought by the provision of universal postal service to some extent, Liu added.

He said that after China joined the World Trade Organization ( WTO) last year, a more fierce market competition emerged with the entry of many foreign private express companies.

The State Post Bureau of China has been working positively in fulfilling its WTO commitments, and taking the advantage of the opportunity to fulfill the universal postal service to guarantee a sound and sustainable development of China Post.

Some 700 representatives from the 189 member states of UPU attended the Strategic Conference 2002 which will end on Oct. 31.

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