The People's Republic of China possesses a diversified communications system that links all parts of the country by Internet, telephone, telegraph, radio, and television. The country is served by an extensive system of automatic telephone exchanges connected by modern networks of fiber-optic cable, coaxial cable, microwave radio relay, and a domestic satellite system; cellular telephone service is widely available, expanding rapidly, and includes roaming service to foreign countries. Fiber to the x infrastructure has been expanded rapidly in recent years.
When the People's Republic was founded in 1949, the telecommunication systems and facilities in China first established by the Qing and Republican ITA and Ministry of Posts and Communications had been seriously damaged from over thirty years of on and off war between warlords, Japan, and the two sides of the Chinese Civil War. What little remained was largely outdated and rudimentary and limited to the eastern coastal cities, the Nanjing-Shanghai region, and a few interior cities. In the 1950s existing facilities were repaired, and, with Soviet assistance, considerable progress was made toward establishing a long-distance telephone wire network connecting Beijing to provincial-level capitals.
Communications in China were established rapidly in the early 1950s. By 1952 the principal telecommunications network centered on Beijing, and links to all large cities had finally been established. Work quickly got under way to repair, renovate and expand the system, and from 1956 telecommunications routes were extended more rapidly. To increase the efficiency of the communications system, the same lines were used for both telegraphic and telephone service, while Teletype and television (broadcasting) services were also added.
