Section 5 Post network construction

After 3rd Session of 1lth Plenary Meeting of CPC, our national economy developed rapidly. Industrial structure was modified, commercial production was increasing, and requirements for communication was getting more and more urgent. Post business increased rapidly, while post network was weak. Post offices, sites, transportation abilities, processing abilities, and technical levels didn't fit for the requirements of business development. So, through enforcing management and modificating, post department made full use of all preferential policies to increase capital input and enforced construction ability, which made post network develop rapidly.

A. Accelerate the construction of post offices

To change the backward situation of urban post facilities, post department actively carried cot the construction policy of cooperation among the state, local governments, collectives and individuals. Under the support of local government it mobilized the enthusiasm of all sectors in the society to accelerate the construction of post offices. The main forms were: (1) In large cities, post office construction fell under municipal planning, and post offices would be established in residential areas. (2) In forest areas and mines, it continued to carry out the method of jointly constructing post services with customer units. (3) It continued to cooperate with hotels and external appropriative buildings in cities to establish post services on the basis of mutual-benefit. (4) Local government was arranged to increase post and newspaper stations to be convenient to the Public according to the plan. (5) To develop stamp-retailing agencies, popularize p.o.box, mailboxes and rural mail and newspaper stations.

At the same time of constructing post offices by social forces, importance was attached to the development of self-operated post offices. During "the 6th Five-Year Plan", MPT increased investment to post, made full use of the maintenance capital extracted from 1% of post income to enlarge the scale and strength of post office construction. After 1988, to solve the problem that post offices were scarce, small, ragged, old and to meet the urgent requirement for updated production facilities, MPT provided one or two hundred millions of maintenance capital for post offices and over several tens of billions of special capitals for low cost, consumable materials and widened post capital channel. The backward situation of post office was improved. By 1990, there had been a total of 38,696 self-operated post offices, 14,933 post agencies, over 7,000 newspapers and periodicals retail stations, 92,500 stamp retail agencies, 181,877 post boxes, pillar boxes, over 200,000 rural mail and newspaper stations. The rapid development of post offices basically fitted economic development and requirements of the public.

Post Hub of Tianjin

B. Accelerate the construction of post hub

To enforce the mail processing ability and fit for mechanized, automatic operation and the requirements of the rapid increase of post business, from 1970s, post departments carried out the construction of post hubs according to the plan, stage by stage. From 1982 to 1986, 11post hubs were established in Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, Shijiazhuang, Yantai, Urumchi, Xi'an, Nanjing, KunMing, Taiyuan and Zhenzhou. 58 productive sites were newly established in all important exchange offices. In 1987, 4 post hub buildings were established in Fuzhou, Chengdu, Naming and Zhengzhou, productive buildings were increased 229,000m². In 1988, post hubs were established in Tianjin, Yinchuan, Chengdu, Fuzhou and Nanjng, post transferring stations were established in Shanghai. Some Provinces accelerated the construction and reconstruction of mail processing centers. 270,000 m² post production sites were increased. In 1989, in the situation of scarce post investment, MPT arranged a set of main line construction projects and technical modification projects. In 1990, it finished the construction of post hubs in Dalian, Changchun, Lanzhou, Guiyang, Qingdao, and Haikou. Beijing post hub building which was the largest one in the country was put into use on Nov. 12, 1990. By 1990, areas of post production buildings had reached 5,268,000 m2. The construction of large amount of post hubs greatly changed post productive conditions.

C. Increase post transportation ability

To meet the requirements of post business development, post departments adopted diversified measures to enlarge post transportation abilities. In 1985, MPT further improved post transportation management system, set up Post Transportation Bureau and six branches in the whole country, which were responsible for the management and control of post transportation. Truck teams were set up in branches, which undertook mail transportation and played an important role in busy-decentralization, block--dispersion, especially in the situation of natural disasters.

Mails were loaded
on the mailer ship

Since 1983, at the same time of making full use of fixed post carriages on trains, post departments gradually developed container transportation mainly by freight trains. Since 1985, post appropriative trucks were added to develop self-operated long-distance post truck route. In 1986, 500 post trucks were imported. From 1986 to 1989, to increase transportation abilities, the construction of self-operated post thick routes continued to be enforced. Several tens of trucks were increased annually to open up several tens of self-transportation abilities. Besides transportation by railways and roads, waterway transportation was enforced. MPT set up Dalian Waterway Transportation Branch of Post Transportation Bureau, established 2 ship teams of Dalian to Yantai and Dalian to Guangzhou. By 1990, the total length of postal routes had reached 4,983,061 km, including 393,364 km air route, 191,313 km train route and 676,747 km truck route.

Post box on train

D. Progress of post technology

In 1979, MPT issued "technical policies on post department". On Nov. 1984, the National Science Committee further drew up development directions and key points of post technologies. Technical renovation and progress of post entered a new stage.

In 1978, Guangzhou Post Hub Bureau installed mailbag transferring and sorting machine, which was used in the newly-constricted post hub through computer control after it was modified. As for mail sorting equipment, through the hard work of technicians of Shanghai Post institute, first automatic manuscript post code recognizing mail sorting machine was Produced. It was approved by MPT in 1981, and was put into use as a trial in the post offices of Shanghai and Guangzhou. After 1983, 3-seat and 5-seat key-press mail sorting machines were produced, and were separately installed in Yuyao post Office of Zhejiang and Wuxi post office of Jiangsu and obtained good effects. Since the end of 1980s, large automatic mail sorting machines had been imported and installed in the post department in middle and large cities.

General Post Bureau monitored
the communication data of national
computer network of newspaper
and periodical issue.

New type of post carriages had been put into use as a trial along the Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Guangzhou railways. This new type of post carriages enlarged loading space and carrying capacity and left the space for installing container lifting and moving equipment inside the carriage. It fitted for rapid loading/ unloading and lessening heavy physical work. As for transportation thucks in local areas, Beijing post office produced hydraulic pressure-controlled loading truck which was put into use in the route of heavy-mail transferring routes. The parcel-extraction manipulator invented by workers of Hangzhou post office was put into use in post offices in large cities after it was modified in 1982.

As for newspapers and periodicals service operation machines, in 1974, Guangzhou post office was the first to install newspaper encapsulation operation pipelining in the office of Nanfang Daily. By 1983, post offices in Zhengzhou, Jinan, Changsha, Haerbin also used different kinds of newspaper encapsulation operation pipelinings. Furthermore, newspaper packing machine and hydraulic pressure--controlled packing machine were produced and used in production.

During this period, computer was used in post production. Since June 1980, Beijing post office had used computer-controlled remittance-check system. Its check speed improved I .5 times comparing to manual check. In 1981, automatic remittance numbering machine, invented by Hebei province was put into use. By 1990, computers had been used in remittance checking in all provinces. Since 1983, Post Administration Bureaus of Hebei, Anhui, Henan and Ningxia successfully adopted computer to process the statistics of newspapers, money-checking and report printing. Its efficiency improved 3-7 times comparing to manual processing. By 1990, computer communication system of newspapers and periodicals service had been operated in 4 inter-provincial networks to develop new functions of newspaper and periodical catalogue, check of newspaper and periodical money accounting, business statistics and conversion among Provinces.

To promote the progress of post technologies and fit for the automatic mail sorting, postcode had been carried out since 1980. The Post Law was issued in 1986 regulating that "to gradually carry out post code in mail delivery". After 1980s, post code was popularly used all over the country.