August 18, 2008, 10:08 AM — If nothing else, China is a country of superlatives: biggest, largest, oldest, most. As China racks up gold in Beijing with just under a week to go in the Olympics, the medal count isn't the only place where China posts the top numbers:
Olympics:
Number of accreditations issued for media, athletes, officials and other participants: 400,000 (approximate)
Number of pages accessed per day from INFO2008 Olympic information system: 1 million (approximate)
Pieces of IT hardware used at Olympic venues: 30,000
Number of servers: 1,000
Number of network and security devices: 1,000
Number of desktops and laptops: 10,000
Number of printers: 4,000
Number of results system terminals: 5,000
Total testing time for IT equipment, in hours: 200,000
Number of 3G phones distributed to Games organizing committee staff: 15,000
Number of Olympic venues: 75
Number of Olympic cities: 7
Number of sports: 28
Number of events: 302 over 18 days
China technology in general:
Number of mobile phone users: 601 million (June 2008, world's largest subscriber base)
Number of China Mobile subscribers: 407 million (June 2008, world's largest operator)
Number of Internet users: 253 million, (June 2008, world's largest online population)
PCs sold in China per year: 23 million
Number of registered accounts for China's QQ IM service: 783.4 million (March 31, 2008)
Sources: Atos Origin, Lenovo, Tencent, Xinhua News Agency.
