In September 1993, when Xu Jing, an editor with the Beijing International Cultural Publishing Co., carried home a 386 PC, none of the 100 families in her apartment building had one. These days, many of her neighbors have home computers more advanced than Xu's. Today, more and more Chinese households in large and medium-sized cities not only own a PC, but tend to seek better performance.
Many people connect their computers to the Internet to roam the information superhighway.
Currently, Beijing has more than 200,000 subscribers, while by the end of June, the national on-line population approached 1.2 million, double the year before. Hence, her old 386 PC became a mere typewriter. When Legend Co. began batch production of computers eight years ago, the country's annual PC sales volume was 80,000 units. But it soared to 1.15 million in 1995 and 3.5 million last year, ranking sixth in the world. This year, China is expected to move into fourth place in the world by topping the sales of Britain and France.