Officials attribute the rise in customs revenues to the country's ongoing fight against smuggling.
Mainland prices fell at the same rate in August as in July, while growth in retail sales accelerated, the National Bureau of Statistics said last week. China's Information Industry Minister Wu Jichuan restated last week that foreign investment in the telecom service sector, banned since 1993, would continue to be prohibited. Mr. Wu's wording left unclear the fate of the CDMA experiments run by Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel and Samsung. Asked how the regulations would apply to Internet-related business, the minister refused to give details. In an earlier report published by the Financial Times, Mr. Wu was quoted as saying that foreign investment in the Internet was not allowed under Chinese law and the government intended to clean up irregularities.