Xu Qian, deputy director of MIIT’s marketing division, made this claim at the 2009 China Internet Conference. But, well, he is in marketing. Add to that being a Chinese official, and you might have to take that prediction with a grain or two of salt.

But for argument's sake, here's the breakdown, according to Xu: Rmb400 billion from network construction, Rmb400 billion from handsets; and another Rmb200 billion from data services, such as mobile video. Sounds dreamy.
 
In reality, the Rmb400 billion for networks is attainable, since China nearly spent Rmb300 billion in 2008 on total telecom capex.

On handsets, it's a stretch. In 2007, handsets sales generated Rmb166 billion in China, so he's not totally off base. But since 3G will slowly gain traction over the next three years, even if you generously assume that China Mobile could attain 30 million new 3G subs next year, each with a new phone at an ASP of Rmb1000, then that's still only Rmb30 billion. If you want to go crazy and triple that figure (making the completely unrealistic assumption that  China Unicom and China Telecom could also pick up an equal number of subs) then you would still fall short.

And as for data services? As of September, the number of Chinese mobile internet subscribers reached 192 million, up 62.7% YoY. In 2008, revenue topped Rmb11.7 billion, up 54.4% YoY. That's a long way from Rmb200 billion, but the growth rate is high. So we consider that a maybe.

Like we said, Xu is in marketing. He's supposed to exaggerate.