A woman checks out a replica of an antique telephone next to a statue of U.S. inventor Thomas Edison during an exhibition in Beijing Saturday. China's telephone subscriber base, including fixed line and mobile phone users, was more than 350 million in May this year and the Ministry of Information Industry expected that to reach 500 million by 2005. Growth in fixed lines remains sluggish in rural areas as stubbornly low incomes prevent farmers, more than two-thirds of the 1.3 billion population, from buying home phones. SD-Agencies