Dialing For Yuan

China's number of mobile phone users, already the world's biggest, surged past 200 million last month, according to state media.

The number of mobile phone subscribers rose by 4.5 million from October to total 200.3 million at the end of November, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing data from regulators.

Lured by such huge numbers, foreign telephone companies are eager to break into China's long-closed market. Beijing has promised to let foreigners own up to 49 percent of Chinese mobile phone companies by December, 2006 - a condition of its one-year-old membership in the World Trade Organization.

The number of China's fixed-line phone subscribers also is surging.

It reached 212.7 million at the end of November, said the Xinhua report Monday. That was an increase of 3.7 million from the figure reported in October.