Section 3 Actively Promote the Modernization of Post Network

A. Enforce post investment

Post Hub of Beijing

In 1990s, post entered a new period of rapid development, one of which was the increase of post investment. For the six years from 1991 to 1996, the accumulated post investment was 10 billion Yuan, which was more than 5 times of the total investment during "7th Five-Year Plan", about 3.3 times of the total investment of 40 years since the foundation of People's Republic of China. In 1997 and 1998, it continued to increase investment, the invest of the two years reached 24.06 billion Yuan. Post administration bureau of each province, autonomous region and city made use of the advantages of "Unification of Post and Telecommunication" to carry out the policy of "compensating post with telecommunication". It collected capital from different channels, increased investment, carried out central office system and express delivery network construction as the key points and enforced construction in order to increase post communication ability rapidly.

B. Accelerate mail centers construction

Post Administration Bureau in each province, autonomous region and city made great effort in the implementation of mail centers system. The post district of Xianning and Jinsha of Hubei province were the experimental units to carry out mail centers system which succeeded in 1995. Time limit for mail delivery decreased 2 days or above, which was a good demonstration. Most provinces and autonomous regions accelerated the technical modification of second-grade mail centers and the construction of third-grade mail centers and mail processing site according to the mail centers system. Jiangsu Province modified Postal route according to the mail centers system. Heilongjiang Province modified sorting and intra-provincial postal route. The 12 mail centers of the post areas in Liaoning Province had carried out sorting system in the mail centers. Newspaper and periodical issue in some post areas started to be transferred to the mat] centers system. By the end of 1998, 35 post hubs in provincial capitals and exchange cities had all been put into use. The national key construction project of Beijing Post Office, over 100,000 m² of post hub engineering and mail processing center in Beijing West Station, were put into use in 1993 and 1995 respectively. By 1998, the area of post office buildings had reached 14,280,000 m².

C. Accelerate the construction of post delivery network

According to the requirements of constructing multiple channels and multiple measures to integratedly make use of delivery network, it accelerated the construction of delivery main line network especially the constriction of express delivery main line network. To make full use of trains to transport mails, MPT undertook technical modification on train delivery main lines of Jing-Guang, Jing-Hu. Besides accelerating the construction of post hub along railways, since 1994, it had changed its postal carriages from model 22 to model 25, which improved productive and living conditions on the postal carriages. In Sept 1992, under the support of CAAC, it rented A-30 airplane of China General Aviation Company to open up the first special airline postal route of China, realizing air post between Dalian (later changed to Shenyang), Naming and Guangzhou. On the basis of special airline postal route, approved by the State Council, CAAC agreed to officially establish China Post Aviation Ltd' in Dec.1994, with 3 airplanes and 2 self-operated postal routes. To prevent from overstock in busy airlines, post department adopted the method of renting fixed capacity on the plane to ensure the in time delivery of EMS mails. To explore the method of post transportation integrated of post, passenger and freight, in 1995, on the basis of the former Chongqing Hongyan Ship Ltd., it set up Changjiang Ship Aviation Ltd of China Post with & ships, and about 100 million Yuan of capital.

Post airplane of China

Because trains "raised the speed" "canceled the slow train", spaced out stations, train post delivery was getting restricted. To add mainline truck postal route became the best choice of enforcing self-operated transportation ability and constructing express delivery network. So the construction of self-operated truck postal route, especially express truck postal route developed rapidly. Regional express transportation network of Beijing, Tianjin, Tangshan, and Qinhuangdao was established in 1992. Express transportation network of Zhujiang and Yangtze river delta areas was established in 1994. Meanwhile, 6 inter-province express mainline postal routes were opened up of Be1JingShijiazhuang, Beijing-Shenyang, Guangzhou-Xiamen, Shanghai-Hangzhou, Hangzhou-Suzhou, Fuzhou-Cangshan. Long distance truck postal routes of Wuhan-Tianjin, Chongqing-Liuzhou were opened up. In 1995, express truck postal routes of Lanzhou-Xi'an, Huhe-Beijing and 18 long distance truck postal routes were opened up. In 1996 and 1997, 11 express mainlines and 28 long distance routes were opened up.

The acceleration of the construction of first-grade truck mainline brought along the construction of second-grade provincial mainlines. Combining with the construction of central office in postal district and the requirements of business development, each province constructed great amount of second-grade mainline Postal routes. It was recorded that from 1994 to 1996, 496 second grade mainline postal routes were built in the whole country. By 1998, the total length of mainline postal routes increased from 1.78 billion km in 1994 to 2.70 million km, increasing nearly one million kilometers in 4 years, which benefited from the rapid development of back postal route.

By use of diversified transportation vehicles, especially the development of mainline back postal route and the utilization of airlines, the situation that post transportation was mainly by trains had been greatly changed. Self-transportation ability was enforced.

D. Accelerate post processing automation and computer network construction

In 1990s, post department actively carried out the policy of "developing post by sciences and technologies". It started from high point, adopted new technologies, equipped post communication network with computer technology. By the end of 1996, 136 automatic parcel sorting machines were installed in provincial capitals and large cities.

Electronization of post bussiness

By 1998, there were 91 automatic mail sorting machines. Inter-province computer systems of newspaper and periodical issue were inter-linked in the whole country. The inter-link of districts, cities and counties with provincial network developed rapidly. In 1998, EMS tracing inquiry systems were interlinked in 201 large and middle cities and 22 countries and areas. Post financial computer system ("Green Card" Engineering) developed rapidly. 527 cities, 5738 post offices were inter--linked and realized to be accessed in different places. "Green Card" Engineering had become the first large computer network in financial system. Computers were widely used in all areas of production, operation, service and management. The integrated computer network which integrated internal production, operation management and services to undertake integrated utilization of information collecting, transmission, storing and processing and share resources was being constructed and had begun to take shape in some areas.

The other important aspect of post technical Progress was the rapid development of electric post offices. At the beginning, postal savings adopted computers to process business and monitor. The effect was good. The efficiency improved. Fuzhou Post Office was the first to use computer in operation services. It was said that a set of computer was a "small post office", which greatly improved service efficiency and was convenient for customers. This new thing was popularized in the whole country. By the end of 1996, the total number of electric post offices had reached 4,581, and reached 8,000 by 1998. The increasing was rather rapid.