China is aiming to increase its number of mobile phone users this year by 46.4 million, to take its total to 132 million, a senior Ministry of Information Industry official has said.

Mr Xu Xiaotian, chief of the the Ministry's department of electronics and information product administration, also said in a speech at a technology fair that China planned to add 25.1 million new fixed-line users to the 144 million subscribers it had at the end of 2000.