The number of mobile subscriptions refers to the number of SIM cards being used in each country and not the number of people using a mobile device. The indicator includes the number of post-paid subscriptions and active prepaid accounts. The number of mobile subscriptions in China has steadily grown from 2000 to 2020, driven mainly by a rising middle class, low-cost offering of budget phones and the expansion of telecommunication infrastructure in rural areas. The country crossed 1 billion mobile subscribers in March 2012, reflecting the prominence of the mobile phone in China’s economic and social spheres. Germany has been used as a benchmark because of its high performance in indicators of digital connectivity.
Prepared by
Rahul Karan Reddy
Rahul Karan Reddy is Senior Research Associate at Organisation for Research on China and Asia (ORCA). He works on domestic Chinese politics and trade, producing data-driven research in the form of reports, dashboards and digital media. He is the author of ‘Islands on the Rocks’, a monograph on the Senkaku/Diaoyu island dispute between China and Japan. He is the creator of the India-China Trade dashboard, the Chinese Provincial Development Indicators dashboard and co-lead for the project ‘Episodes of India-China Exchanges: Modern Bridges and Resonant Connections’. He is co-convenor of ORCA’s annual conference, the Global Conference on New Sinology (GCNS) and co-editor of ORCA’s daily newsletter, Conversations in Chinese Media (CiCM). He was previously a Research Analyst at the Chennai Center for China Studies (C3S), working on China’s foreign policy and domestic politics. His work has been published in The Diplomat, 9 Dash Line, East Asia Forum, ISDP & Tokyo Review, among others. He is also the Director of ORCA Consultancy.