Chinese cellphone users sent 304.6 billion short messages last year, a 300-fold increase over the level in 2000, Xinhua news agency said on Thursday, citing the Ministry of Information Industry.

The rapid rise in new technology has allowed more Chinese to communicate with each other than ever before, but is also a headache for authorities who are keen to control the information to which the people have access.

Internet search giant Google Inc. said this week it would block politically sensitive terms on its new China site and would stay away from e-mail and blogging on the mainland.

The move comes after Beijing demanded information on an e-mail user from Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), and Microsoft pulled down a politically sensitive posting from its China-based blog service. 

Source: Yahoo News

SmartMobs reports the following figures for those interested in seeing how much of a growth this represents: 2000 - 1 billion, 2001 - 18.9 billion 2002 - 90 billion 2003 - 137.1 billion 2004 - 217.7 billion and2005 - 304.6 billion. Couple that with the fact that the largest service provider in China - China Mobile added over 42 million users just last year for a grand subscriber base of almost 247 million and you can see why the mobile content wars are just staring in the Far East.
 

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